Konoha's Maelstrom
by Formulaic
Summary: If you have ridiculous chakra reserves, a forbidden technique that enables brute force training, and an insatiable appetite for epic skills, what are the chances that you'll settle for mediocrity? A bit of insanity is a small price to pay for being awesome.
1. The Fundamentals of Ninjutsu

_AN: So here's the story. The premise is simple. Naruto has a ton of potential. Massive chakra reserves, ridiculous recovery, an iron will, and Kage Bunshin to name a few of his advantages. In canon, this mostly means that everyone and their grandmother can beat the crap out of him. I'm not really on board with that._

_The story is based on Soulblazer87's Leaf Style Maelstrom, which I am rewriting/repurposing for my own uses with his permission. Whether or not I'll still have permission after I completely butcher a few chapters remains to be seen._

_There will be many similarities to Leaf Style Maelstrom and I'll even rip text straight from the source, but there will be significant differences in characterization, plot, and dynamics. This is meant to be a more serious take on the idea. Partly because I can't do humor near as well as Soulblazer87._

_I may have gone overboard with the jutsu theory in this chapter. It's not necessary to pay much attention to it, although it is my justification for why Naruto is going to get as skilled as he will in such a short period of time. If you want to nitpick the details I'm more than happy to receive criticism, especially if I contradict myself or my explanations are unintelligible. I'm going to try to have consistent depth and nuance when it comes to jutsu and skills, and this is laying the groundwork for that._

_(Edit: 10/14 - removed footnote numberings from story content)_

* * *

Naruto sighed as he took off his orange jumpsuit and dropped it haphazardly onto a chair, too tired and preoccupied to even think about cleaning it.

Too darn proud and happy to care either!

He had just become a shinobi! After three years of failure and ridicule, he had done it!

And all it took was sneaking into the Hokage Tower, stealing a scroll and learning an awesome jutsu from it!

That jutsu was the center of his thoughts. Kage Bunshin was amazing! He'd spent years trying unsuccessfully trying to make the Bunshin work, but a few hours with the Scroll of Seals had given him a skill that could defeat a Chuunin! Granted, the Chuunin in question was Mizuki, but the grey haired traitor had been able to take down Iruka-sensei, so did that mean Naruto was in some sense better than his academy teacher? Probably not, although mobbing him with clones might work in a straight up fight.

Putting aside the question of how he would match up against Iruka-sensei, the mere fact that a single technique could make him so much better was something that he couldn't stop thinking about. Kage Bunshin was way better than Bunshin in any way Naruto could think of. It was easier to use, it was solid... and that was all he could think of.

Shadow Clones weren't the only awesome things in his arsenal. It hadn't escaped Naruto's notice that he'd managed to defeat the _Hokage_ with a basic henge. And Kawarimi was certainly useful as well, even if he hadn't used it against anyone more significant than Sasuke-teme.

The inescapable conclusion was that Ninjutsu was freaking awesome. On the surface this didn't seem like a momentous revelation. The Shodaime Hokage's Mokuton and the Nidaime's mastery of water jutsu were just the first examples of legendary jutsu to come to mind, and there were countless shinobi with reputations for showcasing exotic and amazing skills. But there were amazing things that he could learn.

Naruto wasn't suddenly going to develop Mokuton or find a mysterious old man in the woods who would somehow teach him mastery of Suiton Jutsu, so the realization that he could learn a useful skill like Kage Bunshin in a few hours was more world shaking than the newfound knowledge of the demon sealed in his gut... or wherever the hell it really was. If one technique was enough to beat Mizuki and graduate, why stop there? He could get better, there were skills out there that he could learn. _He wasn't a failure_.

So jutsu are awesome. The problem was that he only knew Henge, Kawarimi, and Kage Bunshin. He wanted more. He _needed_ more! If every jutsu he learned was even a quarter as awesome as Kage Bunshin he'd be Hokage in no time!

The first order of business was adding more jutsu to his repertoire. This wouldn't be easy; those that had shinobis in their families had people teaching them taijutsu and ninjutsu and all kinds of stuff, and those with civilian parents could arrange for tutoring or help their children in less direct ways.

Naruto had no one. He was all alone. So he had no one to teach him or show him or to even just be there when he needed some company. The closest he had to a family were the old man and Ichiraku Teuchi and Ayame. He loved them with all his heart, but they weren't there for him like a real family would be. Not that he blamed them. They didn't have an obligation to nurture every adorable orphan in their life... well, maybe the Sandaime did, but that seemed like a complicated issue.

He needed more jutsu. He wanted to have a large family, with many children. And what father would let their child go without as much cool teachings as possible? He wanted to leave a legendary legacy for the clan he had yet to build.

"New jutsu huh... I gotta get me some of those..." He mumbled to himself.

Easier said than done though when you're the scapegoat of the entire village, for stupid reasons that you can't do anything about.

So where could he get some new jutsu? The old man was probably busy, he was the darn Hokage after all. And Iruka-sensei was injured_._

Asking the Kyuubi no Kitsune seemed like a bad idea, and he didn't even know how to get in contact with the demon were he even inclined. And what could a mass of malevolent chakra in the form of a fox teach him anyway?_ Swing your tails and squish things, puny mortal! Oh, you don't have any tails? Sucks for you!_ And that was assuming the fox could even talk.

But there was no one else to ask. So what could he do?

He spent quite some time tossing and turning in his bed, trying to figure out where he should go from here. Just before exhaustion took him however, he remembered something from Iruka's lectures, one of the few he had ever bothered to listen to. "Every Hokage, in addition to having a mastery of basic shinobi techniques, created their own unique skills that set them apart from their fellows in ways that became legendary. "

So, since he was going to be a Hokage... he needed his own techniques!

That was about the first thought that came to his mind when he woke up. The first one that had nothing to with ramen, that is. But what to do?

What kind of super-awesome-cool technique could he make that no one else had ever made?

It would have to be original, cool and easy to use, strong as well but hard to copy or imitate...

So he did the one thing he thought he'd never have to do...

He went to the library.

Most people thought that Naruto was an idiot and completely inept. That was a mistaken perception. He was actually rather clever.

However, he lacked 'knowledge' and 'understanding', the two things that actually turn intellect and wisdom into a usable force. Which is why every time any teacher actually bothered to sit down with Naruto to teach him something, he seemed to pick it up at light speed. Too bad nobody ever cared about the orphan enough to actually look at him away from their preconceptions and own expectations.

But Naruto knew that, he knew he wasn't an idiot, he just didn't know about stuff. Mostly because nobody ever told him anything, they just took things for granted. Therefore, since he couldn't depend on anyone any more, he was a ninja now, he had to do it on his own.

And that meant studying, which meant having to go to the library.

Getting into the library was a ridiculous task on its own. First, he had to spend two hours going back and forth between the library and the Hokage's Tower filling out and filing obviously unnecessary paperwork that was solely enforced just to discourage him from getting anything done. He had to verify three times over that he was actually who he said he was, that he was a ninja, that he did have a place of residence in Konoha. From this he learned a valuable lesson.

Use a fucking henge.

Now to find books on jutsu theory, chakra manipulation theory, jutsu creation theory, jutsu analysis theory...

Well, any kind of 'theory' that had to do with chakra, techniques and jutsu.

The first book he found, 'Elemental Manipulation Theory', turned out to be a pile of crap. Judging by its wear and tear it was quite a well read book. Most of it was about fire jutsu, and it didn't really teach any theory. It was mostly along the lines of _"Type II Katon projection techniques with a Horse to Tiger lead in can have their effective area increased by adding a Rat before the next Tiger." _And then it would go on to list all the other technique specific tweaks you had to make in order for that 'general rule' in order to work for the ten skills that it listed. And then there was a list of fifteen 'Type II Katon Projection' techniques that it explicitly said _not_ to use this trick with, and a warning that using the tweak with jutsu not explicitly listed risked having it expand prematurely. In your lungs.

While that was one of the more ridiculous examples, everything else in the book appeared to run along the same lines. It was essentially a bunch of variations on specific jutsu with its 'theory' being a bunch of fancy but useless explanations about types and charging sequences and whatever else they wanted to print just to make it seem like this wasn't a convoluted list of jutsu.

Having wasted nearly an hour trying to make sense of that pile of crap, Naruto was even more discouraged by his next find. 'The Encyclopedia of Elemental Theory and Alteration Reactions for Ninjutsu, 30th edition' was a massive book that went way over his head. It seemed like it would be a great reference, once he actually could understand things like _pressure induced backflow of tenketsu C34-45, forcing water nature from the low-pressure end of the system at a rate of 60S/(CU * CP). See appendix J3 for curvature conformity of the corresponding e-value to the current elemental ratings._

He guessed that he'd come back to that one in about eighty years.

At this point he wanted to scream in frustration, only managing to hold it in because that would get him kicked out of the library and he wasn't ready to quit.

Naruto refused to believe that he wasn't ready to create jutsu. There had to be a better, more simple approach than spending the next hundred years or so trying to make heads or tails of the Encyclopedia, or just randomly flipping through seals hoping that he didn't spontaneously combust. Although with Kage Bunshin that might make an acceptable last resort.

Academy students didn't really think about it commonplace it was, but Kawarimi no Jutsu was an incredible technique, and it only took five seals! Henge was pretty awesome too, and that only took three. And Kage Bunshin only had one!

Granted, the shadow clone used a special unique seal and the middle boar of henge was actually a weird variation that required twisting and interlocking fingers on the inside _(4)_. Naruto was still pissed that he'd had to figure out that little quirk on his own. He ignored the traitorous thought that he probably hadn't been paying attention when went over that bit.

So these amazing jutsu requiring relatively few seals had to mean that he didn't need to know about tenketsu backwash or whatever the crap that was in order to at least start making jutsu. He'd come back to that stuff later, once he actually had some idea what to make of it. Much later.

The third book he found was nothing short of perfect for his needs. Well, he might have been biased considering the utter frustration caused by the first two, but it was a whole lot better.

The title 'Fundamentals of Ninjutsu: _A Guide to Mastery, Alteration, and Creation_' was kind of dry and, but Iruka-sensei used to say something about fundamentals and basics and knowing that kind of stuff being important, so Naruto thought it could be a good start. The stiff binding and dust on the cover meant the book wasn't that popular, so it seemed it probably wasn't very good.

It turned out that fundamentals were a lot cooler than he expected. He was hooked from the introduction. Whoever this S. Hiruzen guy was, he really knew how to write a book!

"_What does it mean to master a jutsu? Many are satisfied when they can perform their skills 'perfectly' ten times out of ten, wasting virtually no chakra. Some are more stringent in their requirements, saying mastery is being able to use the skill under pressure without giving it undo attention. You can draw the bar higher and higher, even so much so that no one could possibly manage to master a single jutsu in their lifetime, but it is my belief that trying to nail down a technical definition for mastery is missing the point._

_One can never master a jutsu. Mastery is a never ending journey. _

_Every time you perform a jutsu, you understand it a little bit more. You will never be able to execute a jutsu exactly the same way twice, but this is not a bad thing. After practicing hundreds of times, you start to gain an understanding that goes beyond the basics. 'If I hold this seal longer, fluctuate my chakra in this way, the jutsu will behave just a little differently.'_

_The more you understand your jutsu, the more versatile and useful they will be. Maybe your opponent is too fast for your Katon: Gokakyu, but you know how to focus it to trade power for speed. What if you are sparring, and you don't want to hurt your partner? Are you forced to reduce your arsenal, or do you know how to take the bite out of your heavy hitters?_

_Doing a jutsu perfectly is nothing more than using it the best way you know how in the current context. The more you master ninjutsu, the more you can alter them to fit the situation._

_Perhaps you are thinking 'oh, that sounds pretty simple, but it also sounds like a lot of work.' If you aren't, that's what you should be thinking, because that is the most important thing to remember about this approach to jutsu._

_You will need to practice a lot. And then you will need to practice some more. And after that? More practice. And practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice._

_I hope that hasn't scared you off, but that is something that needs to be understood right from the start. You may not be suited to this approach. Most ninja have a fairly limited repertoire of between ten and twenty jutsu that use, often focusing on only a third of that. This kind of generalist attitude may not work for you. _

_Although practicing your jutsu over and over again is something I'd recommend even if you don't intend to master ninjutsu, this will require you to commit a lot of time even to jutsu you will never end up using for any practical purpose."_

Naruto supposed that could be at least part of the reason it looked like this book hadn't been read in years. This whole mastery thing sounded like a LOT of work. He felt something though, a building tension as he read the introduction, something on the edge of his thoughts that was saying _this is going somewhere_ that kept him from looking for another book.

'Elemental Manipulation Theory' was a popular book. The checkout history and the multiple copies on the shelves proved it. He could see why, with the quick and dirty tricks to altering popular jutsu, and it would almost be tempting if you ignored all the theory. In fact, he was willing to bet everyone ignored the theory crap in that book.

'Fundamentals of Ninjutsu' was something else entirely. It was obviously built on a solid foundation, but it demanded effort and understanding, with the promise that it would all be worth it somewhere _way _down the line.

It was almost like this Hiruzen guy was challenging him. He was offering Naruto exactly the kind of path to creating ninjutsu that he'd been looking for, and then saying that he probably couldn't handle the hard work. Well he could handle it! He had more stamina than anyone else in the academy, and he wasn't afraid of hard work! He'd just never really known what to apply that hard work to.

"_I won't be teaching you tricks to do make your jutsu do this or that. I'll be guiding you into discovering those tricks for yourself so that you understand them inside out. The more you do this, the easier it will get, and you will begin to instinctively understand jutsu theory that if I were to try and explain to you in words at this moment would make you want to bash your head against a stone wall before trying to do the same to mine._

_You will make mistakes. You will get frustrated. And most importantly this will take time. Doing jutsu over and over again is a relatively quick and easy endeavor, but you will quickly find yourself getting tired. The limit of how much you can practice will be your greatest barrier._

_The next chapter is almost exclusively dedicated to learning about yourself and finding your limits. KNOW YOUR LIMITS! Crossing them can have disastrous consequences. Exhausting your chakra or burning your pathways can lay you out for weeks. Messing up certain jutsu due to tiredness or careless alteration could be even worse. _

_When you are a Jounin you'll be able to test more dangerous things or skip many safe intermediate steps when testing jutsu using Kage Bunshin, a B-Rank clone technique with the ability to use chakra that transfers its experiences to the user when it dispels._

Naruto's eyes nearly popped out of his head. Kage Bunshin was even more awesome than he thought it was! And that meant that he could do even more awesome stuff! Like try not so safe alterations to jutsu... the blond had to resist the urge to burst out into maniacal laughter for some reason.

_Small steps are the key. I will show you how to master your jutsu, the experience you gain will allow you to alter them more and more as you understand them and yourself, and small alterations will become larger alterations, and soon you'll be creating jutsu. The most important part of jutsu creation is creativity. Start simple! If you imagine a grand jutsu, you're stuck trying to fill in the massive gap between the basic projection of flames to that flaming tornado you want._

_After you have learned the basic chakra control exercises, which are integral to finding your limits, understanding your chakra, and extending the amount of time you can practice, I will teach you some very simple elemental techniques. Two from each element. Since I don't expect you to immediately think up ways to alter them, I will be instructing you on several things to play around with. Your job is to pay attention to how each thing you do affects each jutsu. _

_Once you've had some practical experience with a few basic alterations, the theory will be much easier to digest. If I say 'chakra agitation' what does that really mean to you? If I can point to the specific feeling you get from changing a particular hand seal in a jutsu, or in multiple variations, you can know exactly what I'm talking about, and even attempt to add that agitation without altering the hand seals. _

_You may have heard of elemental affinities. My advice is to forget everything you've heard about them until now. There is an appalling lack of understanding and a multitude of terrible ideas that even Jounin who should know what they are talking about perpetuate._

_You will find one of the elements to be easier to manipulate than the others, but it will be a very subtle thing for a long time yet. Ignoring other elements because of your affinity is a common mistake and a terrible response to learning your affinity. It is true that you will eventually end up focusing on your affinity to advance your ability, and given that it takes years of training to use advanced elemental manipulation even for your strongest affinity, you will likely end up training only one of elements you aren't aligned with to that level if you decide to put in the effort._

_This does not mean you cannot learn elemental techniques of elements you aren't aligned with, and it certainly doesn't mean it isn't worth the bother! There is plenty you can do without advanced elemental manipulation, and playing around with all the elements is essential if you ever wish to choose a second element to train in._

_I applaud you if you stuck around this long, as by now I'm sure you know that the approach to ninjutsu in this book is a lifelong commitment. You may think that this isn't for you, or you may be absolutely certain that it is._

_Here is the way to test that."_

The way to test whether or not this was something he was suited to was Kawarimi no Jutsu. Or rather, a version of the Kawarimi that had 27 hand seals, and not just the standard twelve. All but three of the hand seals from the new version were from what the book described as the 'First Expansion Set', which contained 80 new hand seals.

Some were familiar, like the specialized clone seal he used for Kage Bunshin and a few that were slight variations on the standard zodiac. Others were completely new, and worse still were quite a few that required near painful contortions of his fingers.

Twenty seven seals was absolutely worthless for a practical Kawarimi, so it was a good thing that it wasn't supposed to be used in battle. All you did with it was practice.

Apparently, the five seal Kawarimi was a bastardized version of the 'true' Kawarimi. Any jutsu that was designed with any sort of complex theory couldn't really be developed with with just the standard zodiac seals. They were developed with the first and second expansion sets, and then 'compressed' down to more workable seal sets.

Most jutsu evolved continuously as ninja made slight alterations, but the really groundbreaking stuff was esoteric and generally not used until compressed. Sometimes it was a matter of expediency. Kawarimi was an emergency jutsu. You couldn't stand there for 15 seconds trying to contort your fingers through unwieldy seals that were far too varied. You needed something quick with familiar and easy to transition hand positions.

So the five seal zodiac version did the trick. It was inferior to the expanded versions in almost every way but how quickly it could be used. It was disorienting. It required a very firm understanding of the relative position of what you were trying to replace yourself with. The more the difference between your mass and your target's the harder it was and the worse the backlash and disorientation was, and that was on an exponential scale.

So the book said to practice with the expanded versions a lot, and then try make the chakra flow the same way with the compressed version. It recommended starting out with just the expansion that reduced disorientation and focus on that. It also warned that this wouldn't have a quick payoff, and that was why it was a test.

If you could stick through it for months before getting any progress, and then you actually felt like the progress you were making was worth all the effort, _then_ you were probably suited to really mastering ninjutsu, as opposed to just getting pretty good with the ones you knew.

Naruto wasn't deterred. The more the book talked about how much work and how hard that work would be before he would get anywhere, the more excited he got. The reason?

"Kage Bunshin," Naruto murmured aloud, practically drooling, his voice dripping with reverence and anticipation previously reserved for Ichiraku's ramen and the color orange.

He started chuckling, at first barely more than a rumbling purr in his throat.

"fu fu fu... haha... mwahahaha-AH! OW!" Naruto's head was slammed into the table as a heavy book cut off his first real (and rather pathetic) attempt at evil laughter.

"You're in the library, so be quiet!" The girl who'd just rudely bashed his head in hissed at him, leveling a rather forbidding glare on him. Or what would have been forbidding had it not been for the thick circular glasses and unkempt blonde hair.

"Sorry," Naruto apologized, more out of habit than any real contrition. He was no stranger to people inflicting head trauma on him when he got irritating. The girl stalked off, apparently satisfied.

"Spoilsport," he grumbled when she was out of sight. Didn't anybody realize that sound effects were an essential part of studying? Refocusing himself, he went back his book. For now, he had more studying to do.

* * *

_When Naruto mentions being able to defeat the Hokage with a basic Henge - __Naruto doesn't know at this point that his solid henge is something completely unprecedented._

_The information on Kawarimi and Kage Bunshin is canonical, from the number of seals to the specific ones. Henge was a bit of a toss up, but I decided to go the route where Naruto is the only one who uses a physical transformation. Canon appears to suggest that it is a physical transformation for everybody, but Naruto is the only one I've ever seen make use of that fact. So in this continuum, Naruto couldn't perform the illusion for the same reason he couldn't do bunshin (massive reserves forcing poor natural chakra control), but at some point he botched a seal practicing and it appeared to work better, so he kept tweaking the seal and how he did the jutsu until it seemed like he figured it out, but it turned out to be a new technique. Not that anyone knows that yet._

_ I've seen people make a huge deal out of affinities, and make it oh so hard for anybody to use anything they aren't aligned with, sometimes even impossible. I don't think that's supported by canon at all, so its not happening here._


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Not even a little bit._

_First off, thanks to those of you who reviewed! The favorites and follows were nice too, but reviews are downright energizing. They're making me so happy right now that I almost think I'd even like flames._

_I had a ton of things that I wanted to say in the ANs, but by the time I finished the chapter I'd forgotten most of them. Rather than delay posting I'll just say what I remember and apologize later if I missed something important._

_There were some concerns about pairings. This story isn't going to revolve around pairings. There will be a romantic aspect, but the details are far from set in stone. It really depends on how the character interaction turns out, so I don't want to make plans now and have to force the story to accommodate them later if it doesn't really feel like it'll fit. If I decided not to have any romance at all, that wouldn't gut the story, although it would affect the plot. I won't be ignoring it though, as I do want to explore it. What ideas I do have will have to wait until the story develops enough to see if they'll actually fit.  
_

_The only guarantees at this point is that there'll be no slash and no OC romance. Anything else is fair game. Although you can probably guess that a love triangle between Naruto, Chiyo, and Koharu is not something you need to worry about._

_Anything related to romance is going to take a while to develop, and there may be situations and interactions that suggest things that won't actually happen, or events might conspire to destroy what seemed inevitable._

_The romance isn't going to be neat and tidy. Naruto will be dense. If your enjoyment of the story depends on Naruto getting involved with a particular girl this probably won't work out for you. I have inherited certain things from canon, such as Sakura's crush on Sasuke, Naruto's crush on Sakura, Hinata's crush on Naruto that will be a part of the development. Naruto isn't going to magically realize that Sakura's mean to him and switch off his crush. That's the problem with crushes._

_I thought about doing Yandere Hinata, but that'll have to wait for another story._

_Changes will build up. Naruto being different is going to affect a lot, and this won't be a rehash of the same fights with different dialogues and outfits. Character interaction will determine everything. I get the feeling that no matter what happens with the romance, there will always be those who'll say it ruined the story. Even having no romance. So I'm going to let it develop more or less according to the flow of the story. Obviously my own plans and biases are going to affect it, but I'm aiming for whatever I do to fit framework of the story and be consistent with the characters._

___I'm open to input and feedback about anything in the story, whether it be about romance, plot, or anything else._

* * *

It was an odd, warbling and utterly painful sounding moan that dragged Naruto out from the depths of his sleep.

"Shut up and go away," Naruto commanded, rolling over to try and get some more sleep. Well, that's what he intended to happen.

What came out of his mouth instead was "Shmmrghwa... uguhhhh," as several unpleasant facts suddenly made themselves known.

The distressing sound that had awoken him was something he had been making, which thankfully cut off as he attempted to speak. More importantly, there were thousands of evil ninja bees buzzing inside his head and stinging his brain repeatedly.

An even more disturbing moan wrenched itself painfully from his throat as he curled up into the fetal position, trying to figure out why everything hurt so much and his pillow tasted like dirt.

"Sensei! I think he's dying! I shall take him to the hospital!" someone shouted with far too much enthusiasm. And volume. The curled up blond groaned as the ninja bees in his head decided they'd been going too easy on him.

Naruto opened his eyes slightly, and when the light didn't burn them out or make his head feel any worse he grudgingly sat up, mentally berating himself for falling asleep in a training field before turning his attention to the boy next to him. His intention to reassure the kind (if loud) would be samaritan that he was not dying was blasted away by a kind of surreal shock.

Crouched down beside him was a boy with two mutant caterpillars posing as his eyebrows. Were it not for the earnest and concerned look on the face attached to the caterpillars (as they were clearly too significant to be considered attached to the face) Naruto might have freaked out. The abnormally round eyes, bowl cut, and green spandex had an oddly calming effect. Clearly, this caterpillar-human hybrid hadn't learned how to properly blend in with regular society yet, and it would not be able to hide its dastardly-

Naruto shook his head to halt that clearly out of control train of thought. Seeing those eyebrows first thing after waking up had obviously been detrimental to his thought processes. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, that brought his attention to a second caterpillar-human hybrid. He nearly choked on his tongue as scrambled backwards a few feet in alarm.

"Geh! They're multiplying!"

"What?" the younger one asked, cocking his head to one side in puzzlement.

It was now clear to him what must have happened the previous night to make him pass out here instead of in his relatively comfortable bed. He must have drunk a massive amount of alcohol and then ate a handful of those hallucinogenic mushrooms that Iruka-sensei had warned to stay well away from. The caterpillar twins could just be the last traces of that stuff in his system.

Naruto frowned and shook his head a little again as he stood, hoping to clear his mind a little. Something about these two was screwing with his sense of reality.

"Sorry about that," he said genuinely. "You two caught me off guard and I'm still a bit out of it." He rolled his shoulder a bit, trying to get the ache from sleeping awkwardly on it out.

"Think nothing of it!" The older one said, a beaming smile on his face. "Our youthful exuberance is surely stunning to witness for the first time!"

_If by 'youthful exuberance' you mean giant eyebrows and 'stunning' is code for unnerving, then yeah,_ Naruto thought,_ that's it exactly._

_At least they can't get any weirder._

Of course 'Sensei' chose that moment to give a vigorous thumbs up, a broad smile, and a wink. And then his teeth went 'ping', flashing as though the sun was glaring off them for a moment. Which didn't make sense, as the sun hadn't even properly risen yet.

"Sensei!" Lee shouted happily. Whether it was in response to the praise or the pose, Naruto didn't know, and he didn't want to know. He rolled his tight shoulder again, more to hide his discomfort with the pinging and the shouting than to relieve any pain.

"Ah how rude of me!" 'Sensei' said inexplicably. "Allow me to help you with that." Before Naruto could allow or disallow or even think about what the odd man meant he was right beside Naruto, a steely grip on the boy's shoulder.

"What are you do-EEHHYaaaa? Huh?" Naruto's panicked question was cut short as the older man made a quick twisting motion with the boy's arm. He gave the start of a scream as he felt and heard a crackling pop, but before he could build up any volume he realized that it didn't hurt. In fact, it felt a lot better.

_It's rude to not suddenly manhandle somebody's arm? _Naruto thought a bit incredulously, although without any anger. He moved his arm around, marveling the lack of pain. If he could learn how to do that Kage Bunshin would have another awesome use! His thoughts took an inevitable but slightly disturbing turn. _Would it be weird if I got a massage from a Kage Bunshin? Would it be more creepy or less creepy if the clone was using Oiroke no Jutsu?_

He shuddered and concluded that it would definitely be more creepy.

_Stop thinking about it stop thinking about it stop thinking about it damnit!_

"That was pretty cool," Naruto said, deciding to leave the philosophical debate on the creepiness of self-massages for another time. "Thanks, uh, shinobi-san."

"You are most welcome, and you may call me Gai!"

"And I am Rock Lee, Konoha's Beautiful Green Wild Beast!" Lee chimed in, copying the thumbs up winking pose his teacher had shown earlier. His teeth went ping too.

"Lee! What a beautiful introduction of YOUTH!" Gai bellowed the last word jubilantly, his eyes shining brightly. "I must introduce myself properly, following the wonderful example set forth by beloved student!"

There was a burst of smoke that obscured the man briefly. "I am Konoha's Sublime Green Beast of Prey, Maito Gai!" The smoke cleared to reveal Gai standing in the most ridiculous pose Naruto had ever seen.

One arm was held straight up, the palm positioned as though he were a waiter holding a tray. The other hand was in an upside down 'ok' sign, the circle over his eye and the fingers on his cheek.

Oh, and he was standing on a bored looking giant turtle. That almost didn't register.

Oddly enough, Naruto couldn't help but be more amused than freaked out this time. He supposed the part of his brain that dealt with crap like this by shouting _THIS IS SO WEIRD!_ might have protested being abusively overworked by going on strike. His headache had been steadily disappearing since he woke up and was almost gone, and the resulting good mood might have contributed to how well he was taking this.

Gai and Lee were pretty weird, but they were also really friendly. The poses and the titles were over the top and kooky, but in a fun way. Weird, but fun. Something about their all out enthusiasm made him want to respond in kind.

Naruto stealth formed a Kage Bunshin about ten meters to his ten o'clock. He couldn't help but feel pride in how far he'd advanced from just yesterday. He'd half-assed the seal and only had in the right position for an instant in order to hide the fact that he was actually doing it, but he'd still managed to produce a clone at range and out of sight behind some bushes. That was way beyond what he could do before spending time exploring what he could do with the jutsu.

Naruto decided to make his title simple. He'd had experience with things sounding way cooler in his head than out loud and he wasn't going to get the chance to test it out verbally before hand.

Right as he opened his mouth he changed his mind. These two had been making complete fools of themselves pretty much the entire time he'd known them (which amounted to a less than impressive total of less than five minutes, but still). The funny thing was that he didn't really think the less of them for it. They weren't ashamed of their weirdness... no, their _uniqueness_ in the slightest. They seemed to revel in it.

Once again Naruto felt an unvoiced, unintended challenge. If they could do it, then so could he!

Well, at least with these guys. Just following whatever whim that passed through his mind might make Sakura-chan think he was weird, and that would suck.

"I am Uzumaki Naruto," he stated imperiously, standing as tall and proud as he could. "Konoha's Majestic Orange Maelstrom, and its future Hokage." A breeze wafted through, swirling leaves around him and caressing his hair for a moment and flaring his jacket with what seemed like the most perfect timing ever.

That was because it was.

The clone he'd created had used one of the basic elemental jutsu that he'd learned from Hiruzen's book the night before, a wind jutsu so generally useless it didn't even have a name. All it did was create a gentle, controllable breeze.

One of the things that he was supposed to learn from using the breeze technique was indirect control, guiding things in the air with the breeze. If you were to just blow things around it was near impossible to have any sort of fine control over where they went and any control you did learn would just be applicable to wind techniques, but if they were saturated in your chakra you could use chakra resonation to guide them very precisely. You were supposed to start learning with tufts of cotton, but he didn't exactly carry that around so he'd just improvised and used leaves. It was probably easier with cotton, but he had chakra and clones to spare. Oddly enough the leaves actually absorbed chakra and responded significantly better to the technique than the torn up bits of paper he'd first tried it with.

When he'd started out the night before he'd barely been able to control one leaf so he was understandably proud of the few dozen that wafted through the air for his introduction.

Unfortunately for his coolness factor, he'd overestimated his abilities somewhat.

He hadn't had time to saturate the leaves before using the technique, so his clone had needed to imbue chakra into them through the breeze technique, a skill he wasn't quite good at yet. The more chakra in a leaf, the more easily controlled it was. While you could train yourself to need less and less chakra to have the same level of control, he was far from that point.

The effect that he'd intended didn't require much control at all. The leaves were just supposed to go by at the appropriate moment to give him a heroic mystique and gravitas.

Everything went as planned, except for the part where a few leaves made contact with his head and face. That wouldn't have been too bad, if that had been all.

It wasn't.

One of the leaves got stuck in his nose.

Naruto tried to keep his face straight, but he could feel the heat of an atomic blush on his cheeks and one of his eyes was twitching. He reached up and removed the offending leaf as calmly as he could and flicking it away.

Looking at the way Lee's mouth was twitching it was clear he was holding in laughter. With a sigh of resignation, Naruto decided that pretending it didn't happen wasn't going to help anything. "Go ahead, you can laugh. I know it was funny."

If it hadn't been the leaf, it probably would have been the title. He'd probably keep the Maelstrom part, if he ever had the guts to introduce himself like that ever again, but he needed a less over the top description than 'Majestic Orange'.

Suddenly, Lee wasn't holding back the urge to laugh anymore. Strangely enough, it wasn't because he was laughing. "Forgive my unyouthfulness Naruto-kun! Your introduction was splendid!"

"It's fine Lee-san." The sting of embarrassment was all but gone. Had something like that happened at the academy he would have been a laughingstock for a week, but Lee was just so genuinely friendly that something like a botched attempt at being cool just didn't seem like a big deal. It probably helped that the other boy was unashamedly weird.

"Wonderfully said Lee!" Gai boomed delightedly, smiling proudly at his student. "Naruto-kun's introduction was certainly splendid! I'm sure it would have been ever better if he were in top condition." His tone and demeanor abruptly changed in a way that reminded Naruto somewhat of Iruka-sensei during a lecture. "A good night's sleep in a bed rejuvenates your Flames of Youth ten times better than sleeping on the ground. I completely empathize with the desire to train from the instant you awake, but you must take better care of yourself Naruto-kun!"

Lee had taken out a notepad when Gai assumed his 'lecture mode', and was scribbling along as his teacher talked. "than... sleeping... on the... ground," the boy muttered while writing. He saw Naruto's curiosity. "Words of wisdom should be recorded and passed down!" he explained.

Naruto didn't have the heart to tell him that most people wouldn't consider the fact that beds were more comfortable to sleep on than the ground something profound enough to bother writing down.

On some level he understood Lee's feelings. If he actually knew Hiruzen, chances were he'd have the same kind hero worship that Lee had for Gai. Not to the extent that he'd be willing to dress in green spandex. Orange maybe, but not green. Nor would he be so inspired to hear that beds were nice.

"I didn't mean to fall asleep here," Naruto explained. He got the feeling that leaving Gai with the impression that he was so eager to train that he slept in training fields could turn out spectacularly bad. "I kinda went overboard practicing Kawarimi last night. And trying to throw myself around like a shuriken probably didn't help." The part about the shuriken was mostly just thinking aloud as a reaction to the memory. Given the way he'd managed to knock himself out his recollection was a bit jumbled, but it was all coming back to him as he thought about it.

"Like a shuriken?" Lee mimed the motion, clearly baffled as to how it could be used to throw oneself around. "Is that a riddle? I'm not very good with those."

"Actually–"

"Don't tell me!" Lee interrupted quickly. "I can figure this out!" He was shifting through positions that looked like preparation to jump and spin, frowning at each one when he decided it wasn't going to work. "This is like that 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' thing I haven't figured out yet. Aha!"

"It's really not," Naruto tried to explain, but Lee wasn't listening. Referring to bootstraps had inspired him to try and throw himself by grabbing his own foot. It was a comically outlandish idea, but the truly amazing thing was that throughout his contortions he never lost his balance. Even as he tried odder and odder positions, adding hops and spins to try and fling himself around the clearing, he remained bizarrely graceful. He never stumbled or seemed even the tiniest bit out of control.

Except for mentally, of course.

It took a surprisingly short time for green-clad boy to actually appear to be throwing himself by yanking his feet (he switched which foot he was trying it with every couple of jumps) in odd directions. He was even trying out different kinds of spins, flips, spinny flips, and flippy spins (somehow two different things) that seemed to defy the laws of physics. And reality. The heights he jumped to, the number of rotations, and the sheer _impossibility_ of someone throwing themselves around by their own leg was something Naruto could barely believe even when it was happening right in front of him.

"How wonderful!" Gai crowed delightedly as he joined his student in the air.

Lee's acrobatics were impressive beyond anything Naruto had ever seen before, but his teacher was even more physically adept. He hadn't needed any practice to copy Lee's movements, and from the first leap was already surpassing them physically, artistically, and in overall weirdness.

On the one hand, Gai and Lee were utterly and freakily weird. On the other, Naruto couldn't help being envious of their skills. Gai had started to bounce off trees like a demented green pinball, intermittently shouting "Yosh!".

_That's completely different from what I meant._ Naruto wasn't going to say anything at this point since it looked like they were having way too much fun to care. _My way of throwing myself around is going to be much cooler!_ Naruto thought petulantly. _Once I actually figure out a way to make it work. _His training the night before had been mostly amazing, although not everything had gone perfectly.

He'd been far too excited to go to sleep after reading the 'Fundamentals of Ninjutsu" book, barely even daring to hope that it was as awesome as he thought it was. It was torture but he forced himself to start out with chakra control instead of going straight for the jutsu.

The leaf concentration exercise was as frustrating as he remembered. Between the Kage Bunshin and the book's instructions he hoped to actually get somewhere with it this time. When Iruka-sensei had taught the exercise to the class years ago it had been one of Naruto's most perplexing failures.

It had been incredibly difficult to get the leaf to stick to his forehead, and doing pretty much anything caused it to blow off. He had to be completely relaxed and not thinking about anything but just the _feeling_ his chakra on his forehead. A stray thought, too much concentration, a loud noise, _anything_ messed him up. His record had been six seconds. Nobody else in his class had that kind of problem. The leaf just fell off if they lost concentration, and for everyone else there was not such as thing as being too concentrated.

At first he thought it was cool. No one else could propel the leaf away from them, so that had to be cool. And then it became obvious that he wasn't getting any better at the part that apparently mattered, no matter how much he practiced. He'd thought it would be funny to try and launch leaves at Sasuke, which didn't quite work, but it did get him told off by Iruka-sensei for being 'intentionally disruptive'. The teacher didn't take him seriously when he complained about concentrating too much, and after reprimanding Naruto he decided that the boy was making a nuisance of himself on purpose rather than actually trying to concentrate properly._  
_

They'd moved onto the basic academy jutsu not long after, and his relative success with Henge and Kawarimi meant that his continued lack of progress with the exercise didn't become a lasting issue, at least as far as his grades were concerned. He'd kept at it on his own for about another couple of months, but the fact that it seemed to get even harder with all the effort he was putting into it resulted in him spending less and less time trying until he wrote it off as a lost cause.

Kage Bunshin had given him hope of erasing that painful failure.

He didn't really think that having ten clones doing the same thing would help him learn ten times faster, but he was hoping that there was some benefit. If ten clones helped him learn even ten _percent_ faster then it was something he was going to make full use of. Clones were cheap, after all.

Naruto's impatient nature had actually ended up being beneficial for once. He hadn't been expecting to get anywhere fast with the leaf concentration and the tree walking exercise just sounded too damn cool to wait for, so he'd had a significant number of clones trying that out at the same time rather than wait for progress with the supposedly easier leaf exercise.

Even with fifty clones doing the leaf exercise, none of them were getting anywhere. However, one of the fifteen clones he'd assigned to the tree walking exercise had managed to get far up enough a tree that a botched fall had done enough damage to force it to dispel about a half hour in. The memories of the clone had transferred the real Naruto, and every other 'living' clone. The clone that had 'died' had managed to get about three feet farther up a tree than any other clone, and suddenly every other tree climber experienced a small but noticeable improvement. That had been most apparent in the clones that were running up trees at the time of the first clone 'death'. They could actually feel the the improvement mid climb.

The tree climbing clones had realized the implications rather quickly and all dispelled themselves, which resulted in the leaf concentration clones dispelling as they too realized that it could help. There was a brief period of dizziness cause by the influx of information, but it only lasted a few seconds. It was something to take note of, but given that it was something like thirty of forty hours worth of experience it wasn't really surprising or concerning.

The next batch of clones had certainly proven the use of the Kage Bunshin. He'd been slightly but noticeably better at the leaf concentration exercise, but it was the tree climbing exercise that had been the most improved. The first clone that had dispelled had gotten around twenty feet up the tree when it had fallen and 'died'. All of the new clones had managed just above thirty feet on their first try, a full ten foot gain over the best individual accomplishment. That meant the combined experience of clones was actually worth a great deal.

It had taken some experimentation to find what felt like the most effective method and he was sure that if he kept at it he could refine it even more. He settled on having a clone dispel itself if it felt like it had learned something unique, sharing its experience with its brothers and creator. The more he practiced the technique the easier it was for a clone to figure out when it had learned something worth sharing. It also became clear that any clone that dispelled itself returned most of its remaining chakra to him, whereas those that were dispelled not of their own will only returned a portion. It was difficult to tell exactly how much, but Naruto would guess between half and three-quarters.

Between the chakra returned from the clones and his own natural recovery rate the only real cost was the strain from getting memories the memories of several clones per minute. It wasn't debilitating, but it did build up over the few hours that it took to become comfortable with tree walking.

About a half hour's break in which he read 'Fundamentals of Ninjutsu' had proven enough rest to return to training. By that point Naruto was more than convinced that the book was the real deal, and he was eager to start doing new stuff. Walking on trees was awesome but there was so much more that he wanted to get to. He'd left a few clones to keep practicing tree walking and the leaf concentration exercise, because _'mastery is a never ending road'_, and then created four more groups.

Two of the groups had worked on Kawarimi. The smaller one was just trying to memorize the twenty seven hand seals and get to the point where they could actually run through them. The other group was working on the expansion that just reduced disorientation. It only had seven seals, but four of them were weird new ones.

Another group worked on learning the gentle breeze technique, because that was what he was supposed to start learning alterations with. That group would go on to work on indirect control through chakra resonation once it learned the technique.

The last group had been given the task of getting creative with Henge. The book had advocated understanding everything you know because all techniques were more versatile than their common uses. He'd had to look up 'versatile' in the dictionary, but it sounded like good advice.

He was already using Kage Bunshin a lot, so getting to know that was going to happen naturally. The book had him learning about the ins and out of Kawarimi rather exhaustively, so that had been covered. That only left Henge.

Without the book telling him what he should be working at, he'd been left with a bit of a quandary, and it had taken quite a while to come up with anything that even seemed plausible.

Sure, turning into a tiger or growing a set of wings to try and fly sounded cool but didn't exactly work out in practice. He didn't magically gain a tiger's musculature, so even though he looked like a tiger walking around was more than a little awkward. The wings had a similar problems. The most he could get them to do was twitch.

It wasn't as though the practice was useless. He'd learned a lot about Henge's limits, getting better at it himself, and found even _more_ interesting things about Kage Bunshin.

Clones could use Henge better than he could. It was a bit odd, but he figured the fact that they were just chakra constructs in the first place meant that changing their physical shape came a bit easier for them.

The closest he'd come to a practical new application for the Henge that night was Kage Bunshins turned into weapons. It certainly wasn't even close to usable, but it had potential. There were definite mass limits, and it could be that all the chakra control and practice in the world wouldn't allow him to make something even as small as a katana. And what use was a weapon that would dispel on contact if it lost its concentration? Despite all that, Naruto was sure that a sentient weapon was something worth pursuing. He'd just have to get better at Henge and Kage Bunshin and see if anything he learnt later might help out with that.

There was one aspect that seemed like it could work out, and not in a 'ten years down the line' sort of way. One of his brilliant clones (they were all him, therefore all brilliant in his mind) had gotten the idea to turn into a Fuuma Shuriken like the one Mizuki had used. It had taken some practice in order to manage one small enough to be thrown, but he'd been sure that he'd had a breakthrough on that.

It was not to be. The henged clone was aware enough of its surroundings that the intense spinning motion made it incredibly dizzy and it dropped the henge almost immediately and dispelled as it crashed into the ground.

Naruto had not been deterred. The clones worked on reducing their awareness and maintaining their concentration within the technique, and eventually (after a _lot_ of second-hand dizziness) managed to hold the transformation indefinitely.

The problem was what to do after that. The point of the technique wasn't to avoid the costs of buying Fuuma Shuriken, it was the whole flying through the air bit that was interesting. Even having gotten the holding the Henge through intense spinning down he'd been left with the release. The clone came out of the transformation spinning as fast as it had been as the shuriken, leaving it utterly incapable of doing anything except crashing into something and dying. Naruto had no ideas at all on how to get around that, so he'd set it aside for the time being._  
_

The way he'd trained with the clones was constantly changing throughout the night.

All the clones had Naruto's personality and memories, so they certainly weren't capable of working nonstop without distraction. The training had started out with each clone just doing its own thing, trying to complete its assigned task. Then the clones started interacting. They'd talked to one another, socialized, and even goofed around a bit. Naruto hadn't been terribly amused by two clones spending twenty minutes playing rock paper scissors, but there was nothing he could do about it after the fact, and any clone that wanted to do something could neatly avoid punishment by dispelling. Naruto had never been very good at doing what he was told, so how could he expect so many copies of him to be perfectly obedient drones?

He hadn't put a stop to it because there didn't seem to be a point, and also it was pretty nice. He got on really well with himself, and it was like he was hanging out and training with a bunch of friends. It hadn't taken him long to see that it was actually beneficial to his training as well. Clones that had fun and were relaxed transferred the memories and feelings to all the other clones when they dispelled, keeping those that were training from getting bored, and it even reduced the real Naruto's mental strain. From then on, he'd added a group of clones whose job was just to have fun, and let the training clones interact and bounce ideas off one another.

That wasn't to say there weren't any hiccups. Two clones had gotten into a heated argument over ramen of all things. Forcefully dispelling them had revealed they didn't have differing opinions (which would have been really freaky) but had misunderstood each other in exactly the same way. It had been rather embarrassing.

The clones had been getting rather good at using Kawarimi on each other, as the practicality of allowing a clone to take a hit in his place was rather obvious. It had been difficult at first but they'd certainly been motivated.

Experimentation with Kawarimi ended up with five clones deciding that it would be brilliant to find out what would happen if tried to swap themselves in a circle. A would use Kawarimi on B, B on C, C on D, D on E, and E on A, all at the same time.

Had they bounced this idea off other clones they might have gotten the idea to try having just two clones swap with each other first, but A through E had been best buddies their entire lives (all twenty minutes of them) and talking about it outside their own little clique didn't even occur to them. They'd make this incredible discovery together!

It was possible that things might have gone better had they used the long version of the Kawarimi, or at the very least the version that just reduced chakra backlash, but the original five seal version had been the easiest to coordinate. So they'd counted down and used the technique with no regard for the consequences. In their minds either something awesome would happen or nothing would happen at all.

The five simultaneous techniques had strained at cross purposes, building up energy as they tried to execute themselves. A visible aura of roiling chakra had flickered up around the surprised clones, none of whom had any idea how to stop it. Something snapped and they started swapping places randomly several times a second each. It had only taken a few seconds for the chakra backlash to completely overwhelm the clones chakra systems, tearing them apart in an explosion of energy.

The memories of the five clones botched technique had caused every other clone to be disrupted, and the memories of all the clones plus the traumatic death of the five had slammed Naruto into unconsciousness.

It had been a sobering experience. Naruto felt lucky to be alive, and made a mental promise to be much more careful experimenting, even with Kage Bunshin as a safety buffer.

Despite the frightening experience he couldn't help but feel a bit excited. Whatever had happened with the Kawarimi there had been something profound. He was going to stay well away from trying that again until he had a theory about why it had happened and had reduced the chakra backlash from the technique as far as he could.

_This is just the start_, Naruto thought to himself, his determination almost a palpable thing. _One day I'll know everything about Jutsu. _

Naruto was startled out of his thoughts as Lee came down out of spin to try and kick a training post near him.

The kick clipped the post rather than hitting it dead on, but still manage to gouge a chunk of the wood with such force that it splintered out as sawdust.

"Watch it!" Naruto complained as the wood nearly hit him, even as he marveled at the power of the kick. He wondered what would have happened to the post had it taken a direct hit.

"I'm sorry Naruto-kun," Lee said, swaying and stumbling a bit. "I appear to be unyouthfully dizzy." He brought out his notepad again and started writing and muttering. "Throwing... yourself... around... like a... shuriken... makes... you... dizzy."

Gai jumped down beside Lee, not looking dizzy in slightest despite his more extreme acrobatics.

"You must train yourself to overcome the dizziness Lee! Anything can be done with the Power of Youth!"

"Sensei! Yosh!" Lee exclaimed. "If in one week I have not trained myself not to get dizzy I shall backflip around Konoha ten times while blindfolded!"

"And if you can't do that, I shall fling myself like a shuriken all the way to Kumo and back without stopping!"

"Sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Naruto-kun!"

Naruto hopped back a step in surprise, desperately hoping he wouldn't have to join in... whatever this was.

"Lee-san?"

"Naruto-kun!" Lee said happily. "Thank you for sharing your youthful training exercise with us!"

"It's way more your exercise than mine," Naruto explained, relieved that he hadn't been drawn too far into the back and forth of names. "There's no way I'd be able to pull that stuff off." Naruto thought he might have said something he shouldn't have as he saw the fire in Gai's eyes.

"Then you shall join us in our training to bring out your Flames of Youth!"

"Sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Naruto-kun!"

_Shit._

* * *

_Well, there we have it. I had more planned but that seemed liked a definitive end to the chapter._

_There's a ton of foreshadowing and hints as to Naruto's development in here._

_Gai and Lee pretty much came out of nowhere. I wanted to keep this chapter from just being a boring info dump on Naruto's training, and somehow they hijacked the plot in the process. I had very different plans for when Naruto would first meet Lee and what it would mean. This actually has quite a large effect on the plot._

_They are a bit hard to right, and I had a hard time trying to figure out where to put all the 'Youth!'s and the 'Yosh!'s. I hope the characterization turned out ok._

_Naruto meeting two of the friendliest and most genuine people in the entire series this early is going to affect how he connects with everyone else. Particularly Sasuke and Kakashi. Canon Naruto hungers for acknowledgment and friendship, and he becomes rather focused on Sasuke and to a lesser extent Kakashi for validation. When Sasuke starts acknowledging Naruto its at the expense of any friendship they might have, and that dynamic was something I planned to explore._

_Having said that, I can't go that route any more. Gai and Lee just click way too well with Naruto's determination to disregard, and with Lee's obvious combat superiority over Sasuke plus the fact that he's actually willing to be friendly is going to change Naruto's interaction with Sasuke a lot._

_Things should pick up after this. Next chapter should at least get through team selection._

_Edit: These footnotes will seem odd, as I've removed the numberings from the story content because they were breaking immersion._

_(When Naruto is wondering if it would be more or less creepy to massage himself with Oiroke no Jutsu) - The basis of this story is Naruto better utilizing Kage Bunshin so I had to go there. He's constantly thinking about how he can apply the technique to just about anything he comes across. While that was originally intended to be a throwaway line for the sake of humor, it will actually lead to some interesting revelations about the technique later. He's not going to be experimenting sexually with Kage Bunshin, in case anyone was worried. Just ewww._

_(The pose on the turtle) - Gai does this pose when he introduces himself right after Lee kicks Sasuke's ass before the Chuunin exam._

_(Iruka dismissing Naruto's issues with the leaf concentration exercise as tomfoolery) - Iruka wasn't being mean, he simply had no idea how to teach an Uzumaki Jinchuuriki. _

_(Using henge to turn into a shuriken) - In canon that seemed to be such a simple bit of cleverness, but the more I thought about it the less I could just leave it be. Thinking about how that henge must work in order for it to be that easy makes it pretty much like magic, and I don't want to just shove that under a rug and say 'tada! awesome technique!'_


	3. Team 7, part 1

_Disclaimer: I still don't own Naruto, in case anyone was wondering. Batteries not included._

_Warnings: Spoilers for Naruto manga. Bet you weren't expecting that. Things get a little gritty and dark when the subject of Jinchuuriki and the Kyuubi attack come up, but the rating is M so I'm assuming you can handle that._

_It looks like the footnotes kind of interrupt the flow of the story, so I'm going to try out not using them. I'll just give commentary of the chapter on the bottom and hopefully it'll be clear what I'm referring to._

_Corrections: So, there were a couple of errors in previous chapters. I'm sure there were more but these were the ones I managed to catch. In chapter one, Naruto imagined Kyuubi telling him to 'swish things' with his tails. That was meant to be 'squish things'. In the chapter 2 AN at the bottom I said 'Lee's obvious combat superiority over Sasuke plus the fact that he's actually willing to be friendly _**isn't**_ going to change Naruto's interaction with Sasuke a lot.' The '_**isn't**_' should have been an 'is'. That should start to be clear in this chapter. Also in that comment I wrote 'right' instead of 'write'. Is that ironic? I can never tell._

_My apologies for the lengthy wait since my last update. A combination of real life and this chapter being rather difficult to write is where I'm laying the blame. And for a while I could only seem to write worth a damn on a train listening to the Pacific Rim OST. Which was really weird. So if at any point I jump the shark with a Kaiju to the face, you'll know that Ramin Djawadi is to blame. _

_I've split the chapter into parts so I could post this sooner, and also so I wouldn't give into the temptation to write the whole thing over again. I'm not entirely satisfied with how forced some things in here feel, but at this point I'm trying to ignore that to move on._

_Since this is mostly from Naruto's POV you're going to see some evidence of his crush on Sakura, because that's where he's at now. That doesn't mean they are going to get romantically involved. It's not impossible, but it's looking pretty unlikely at this point. But plans change, so who knows. Also, I'm not pleased with how one-dimensional Sakura and Sasuke came out in this chapter. Please keep in mind that the POV is a subjective lens, and just because Naruto (or whoever else the POV is) thinks something, or observes something, doesn't make it the objective truth. _

_A good example of what I mean is when Gaara first shows up in the manga and Sasuke thinks something along the lines of 'his stealth is on par with Kakashi's!' From that we can't say that Genin!Gaara really does have the same stealth skills as a former ANBU captain's, just that both Gaara and Kakashi's stealth are beyond Sasuke's ability to detect, which shouldn't be a particularly amazing achievement at that point. _

_I tried a version of this chapter that went through all the POVs of Team 7 to give more depth, but that __**really**__didn't work out for a lot of reasons._

* * *

_**Chapter 3: Team 7, Part I**_

"Naruto, what the hell are you doing here? Showing up and pretending you graduated is a stupid plan, ya know?"

Naruto glared balefully at Kiba, tapping his forehead protector meaningfully. "See this? It means I'm a ninja." He put his head back on his arms, clearly dismissing the Inuzuka, who huffed before walking away. Naruto was glad that it had been that easy, as he hadn't quite figured out what to say if anyone asked _how_ he'd graduated. The Mizuki incident had been classified.

Shikamaru, sitting to the blonde's left, narrowed his eyes in contemplation for a moment as he noted the wear and tear on Naruto's 'new' protector before deciding it wasn't worth the effort to figure out what was going on. So what if he'd never seen Naruto looking even remotely tired, or deliberately sit in the back to try and catch some sleep? It wasn't his problem.

For his part, Naruto was just trying to get in a bit of recovery from his morning training before class. He'd been waking up at five in the morning every day for the past week in order to train with Gai and Lee, who'd extended the invitation to do so after running him into the ground the day they'd met. They'd clearly been surprised and delighted when he'd shown up the next morning. It could have been they hadn't expected him to recover enough to train any more for a few days, or it could be that no one they'd invited to train with them before had ever taken them up on it. With good reason. They were crazy.

They were also incredibly fit. The acrobatics inspired by Naruto's careless comment about throwing himself around like a shuriken was merely the tip of the iceberg. They'd had to handicap themselves to give him even a chance of keeping up with them when doing laps around Konoha. It turned out that Lee was still faster than Naruto even when he did his laps on his hands with a boulder twice his size tied to his feet, and Naruto had to take a few breaks over the course of their routine when the burn in his legs became too much to bear. It usually only took a few of Gai and Lee's sped up laps, as they went faster without him, for the burn to subside enough for him to rejoin them.

Lee's physical condition was leagues ahead of Naruto's in almost every way. Naruto sort of had the edge in stamina as his Kyuubi enhanced recovery was by definition inhuman. Given enough time, he could do thousands of pushups, but not on one finger with a boulder on his back like Lee could in a quarter of the time. Lee liked boulders a lot.

Naruto stood no chance in their spars. Lee completely dominated without expending any effort whatsoever. It was a bit depressing at first, but it quickly became apparent that unlike getting beat on by Sasuke or Kiba, Lee wasn't using his superiority to show off by going all out. He was actually helping Naruto, showing him where he was going wrong by pouncing on his worst openings, over extensions, and other flaws instead of just indiscriminately bulldozing through every defense like he was most certainly capable of. Given that Lee could knock him across a clearing with a lazy backhand Naruto had plenty of motivation to refine his Taijutsu really quickly. Between finally having a sparring partner who didn't delight in the chance to beat the crap out of him and Gai's more formal Taijutsu instruction his skills were growing in leaps in bounds, along with his physical fitness.

Naruto's eyes narrowed as he noticed Sakura sidling up to Sasuke several rows in front of him, shoving one of the graduates aside when he failed to automatically clear the way between her and the object of her affection.

"Sasuke-kun, can I sit next to you?" she asked, scooting up to him without giving him the chance to answer. Sasuke ignored her, as usual, and she ignored the fact that he was ignoring her in favor of gazing at him adoringly, as usual.

_He's nothing special,_ Naruto thought grumpily. _Lee could kick his ass blindfolded with both hands and a foot tied behind his back._ _A couple of clones and even I could take him out now._

While ganging up on Sasuke with his clones and beating the crap out of him would be rather satisfying, it probably wouldn't endear him to Sakura-chan very much. He'd managed a lucky kick that had knocked Sasuke out of the ring a couple months back, and she'd been extra scathing to him for weeks.

The problem was that he couldn't think of any other way to get her attention.

Asking her for dates annoyed her. Giving her flowers annoyed her. Trying to be her friend annoyed her. Asking her for help with homework annoyed her.

He'd been excited at the idea of making a jutsu for her. She'd have to find that amazing, wouldn't she? But the best he could come up with was to float sakura blossoms around instead of leaves, so that was a bit of a bust.

A week ago Naruto probably would have tried to force a confrontation with Sasuke at this point, but now his minor irritation wasn't nearly enough to motivate him. A large part of the tension between Naruto and Sasuke, at least on Naruto's part, was that Sasuke had been the _best_. He'd been Naruto's measuring stick. For as long as he'd been in the Academy, he'd thought that being better than Sasuke _meant _something important. Like it would prove his worth to himself, and everyone else. After meeting (and more importantly, getting beat up by) Lee it had been clear he had been setting his sights _way_ too low.

Being the best in the class just didn't mean much to him anymore. Sasuke was just a big fish in a small pond. Naruto had always hated how everyone seemed to place the brooding bastard on a pedestal and it galled him to realize that he'd been guilty of the same all along. Sure, Sasuke was more skilled than Naruto in a lot of ways, and for the first time it didn't hurt to admit that even in his head. He'd just keep working on his jutsu, letting Gai and Lee run him ragged with their insane training, and rounding out his skills for his own sake. And if it helped Sakura-chan realize how much more awesome than Sasuke that he'd always been, that was just a bonus.

Unfortunately for Naruto's emotional maturity, while his epiphanies took the edge off his jealousy they didn't grant him complete indifference to Sasuke. He couldn't help giving the bastard the evil eye as Sakura scooted even closer.

Glaring at the back of Sasuke's head was interrupted by Iruka-sensei's arrival. The class quieted down as their conditioning to avoid the dreaded 'Demon Head no Jutsu' kicked in. The teacher's eyes scanned the students quickly, pausing as they landed on Naruto's position. The blond gave a thumbs up, resulting in a smile.

_He got a new forehead protector,_ Naruto noticed as Iruka began taking roll. There were a few startled reactions when he got to Naruto's name.

Roll was followed by a boring lecture on what it meant now that they were all Genin, but fortunately for Naruto five massage clones popping had mellowed him out. His squeamishness at the idea of giving himself massages had quickly been thrown aside after the second day of insane training with Gai and Lee. While it was most effective to also have the real him massaged right before the clones popped, even just the transferred experience physically relaxed his muscles. The memories of fifteen clones having gotten massaged after a day of hard training was a heavenly way to send himself to sleep.

_Represent the village with professionalism, teams of three, learn vital skills, blah blah blah... mmmmh, this table is comfortable. Maybe five relaxation clones was a bit too much._

Iruka eventually got past all the boring stuff and to the team assignments.

"Team 7 is Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura–"

Naruto gave voice to his joy at this development. He was still riding the mellow from his massages, so it didn't quite convey his enthusiasm properly. He lazily raised his arm, sporting a thumbs up (he was spending too much time with Gai and Lee), and his 'yay' came out rather casual and barely audible over the sound of Sakura's dismayed groan.

_She doesn't have to sound quite so disappointed,_ Naruto pouted mentally as he waited for Iruka to announce their third teammate. The third wheel, so to speak. _Anybody but Sasuke_, he prayed fervently.

After a few seconds it became clear that Iruka wasn't continuing, so Naruto lifted his head off of his seemingly comfortable desk to see what the hold up was. Iruka and the rest of the class were looking at him with unnerving intensity, clearly baffled by something.

"Is there something on my face?" Naruto asked nervously, self-consciously wiping a hand across his mouth. It would be embarrassing if there was a ramen noodle hanging off his mouth or nose.

"No," Iruka-sensei said carefully. "You're just... more quiet than usual."

"Ah," Naruto said in comprehension. They didn't know what to make of his newfound zen, and clearly the class just wasn't the same without his liveliness. He'd reassure them that he could still be counted on to be the life of the party when his zen wore off. "I'm trying out silent exclamation marks to see if they taste any better."

_What the hell did I just say? _Naruto asked himself, as the looks he was receiving got even more incredulous.

A clone that had shirked its duties to go and experiment with mixing instant ramen with random stuff had popped at the same time as another clone in the library had been killed by that blonde girl with glasses he couldn't stop messing with, resulting in an odd influx of memories that shorted out his brain mouth filter. Maybe sneakily swapping all her cryptography references with Icha Icha when she'd dropped her pen had been going a _little_ too far. Bashing his clone's head in with an encyclopedia was a bit of an excessive response though.

"I have no idea what to say to that," Iruka-sensei admitted after an awkward pause. "Moving on, your third teammate is Uchiha Sasuke."

Naruto groaned, letting his head fall back down with a painful thud as Sakura squealed happily.

* * *

"You still can't do the leaf concentration exercise?" Sakura asked incredulously.

Naruto sighed exasperatedly as his concentration shattered and the leaf fell off his forehead. It had taken an hour for her to get bored enough of trying to talk with an unresponsive Sasuke to turn her attention to him, and then only to mock him.

"I can," he protested. "Just not very well. That's why I'm working on it."

"How could they even let you graduate?" Sakura continued bitingly. "In fact, didn't you fail? Did you bribe Iruka-sensei or something?"

Sasuke "hn'd" in a way that sounded suspiciously like a fraction of a laugh.

"I passed," Naruto said sharply, not happy with the way the conversation was going. "There were just some... issues with the clone technique."

Sakura giggled as she remembered Naruto's previous attempts at the least difficult of the academy jutsu. "Issues? Is that what you call it?"

He resisted the urge to growl. Sakura apparently deemed the conversation over and went back to bugging Sasuke.

This team was a nightmare for him, the worst possible combination imaginable. To have Sakura-chan so close, yet so far away was pure torture. She barely even noticed he was there unless Sasuke was doing something less interesting than breathing.

He'd tried in vain to talk to her when everyone else had left the three of them in the room, but an annoyed Sakura had made it clear that interrupting her very one-sided conversation with Sasuke wasn't going to be tolerated.

After it became clear that their sensei was running late, Naruto had given up on conversation (he'd even tried to talk to Sasuke, but no luck there either) in favor of working on the chakra control exercise. Sitting still and doing nothing just wasn't something he was capable of.

Whoever their sensei was had better have a damn good reason for not showing up on time. Naruto was missing out on valuable training time. He'd refreshed the fifty or so clones he had working on Taijutsu over lunch, but his training options were irritatingly limited when his real body wasn't involved.

Without the ability to continually replace clones he had to diversify his training so as not to have a bunch of inefficient overlap. Technically having each clone working on something different seemed the most efficient use of them in theory, but being able to focus on one or two things _felt_ better. The slight differences of each clone's experience combined to give a fuller understanding of each aspect of whatever he was working on, and the sheer speed of progress was exhilarating. It was like he could feel himself getting stronger by the minute.

The training method he was using now was actually something Gai-sensei had helped him come up with when he found out that Naruto's idea of hard work was using hundreds of clones at a time.

A quarter of the clones were practicing exactly one part of a kata, a specific strike or movement with no two clones doing the same thing, and another quarter was observing to point out any mistakes in form. The last half was paired off doing partnered attack and defense exercises. This way Naruto could cram hundreds of hours of muscle memory training into each day. After they had all dispelled and shared their experience, the next step would be to have a group going the whole kata a bunch of times to smooth over the transitions.

That was supposed to be paired with physical training in order to condition his body, but he was stuck here waiting.

Or was he?

Naruto had been resisting the urge to leave a shadow clone in his place since about twenty minutes after Iruka had taken off, leaving the three of them as the only people in the room. The thought that their sensei was only running a little late and would be there any minute had restrained him at first, but his excitement at meeting his new sensei and the desire to do so in person had all but disappeared.

* * *

"You three are pretty boring."

Kakashi didn't have to antagonize his new students within seconds of them first laying eyes on him, but the looks of indignation on their faces were even more rewarding than he could've hoped for. In his defense, it was kind of the truth. They could've used the hours preceding his arrival to socialize, getting used to the idea that they'd be on a team together.

The brief glimpse of their body language before they'd noticed him entering the classroom had made it abundantly clear they hadn't made productive use of their time together, although Naruto had at least been trying to train his chakra control, however ineffectively. The boy's massive reserves meant that he'd need to start out with far more chakra intensive exercises to get anywhere.

In an ideal world Naruto would have been receiving training since he was old enough to walk. Kakashi had been eagerly anticipating training his sensei's son, but despite having the support of the Hokage's advisors, some major clan heads, and even Shimura Danzo, the Sandaime had told him that Naruto wasn't to be trained yet and that was the end of it.

It had made no sense to Kakashi. Uzumaki Naruto was the worst kept S-Rank secret in the history of the elemental nations. The citizens of Konoha had found out within hours of the sealing, and the other countries within days. His blond hair and blue eyes had to scream 'Namikaze!' when coupled with the sealing, and the Sandaime was going to let him grow up like just another orphan, dangling him in sight of anybody who might want to kidnap a jinchuuriki or kill Namikaze Minato's child?

But the deluge of kidnappers and assassins that Kakashi knew had to be coming never arrived. The other countries seemed even more confused by the Sandaime leaving Naruto out in the open than Kakashi was. There had been token attempts, but nothing that could be termed serious was attempted by any of the major hidden villages. They'd mostly been content to test the security around Naruto every once and a while, and even that had dropped off by the time Naruto had turned about six or seven.

Although relieved, Kakashi had been utterly baffled by the intelligence reports he'd managed sneak looks into during those early years. Within a week of the sealing Iwa had decided that Naruto was a tongue in cheek red herring.

They'd been certain from day one that there was no way he could be a real Uzumaki, not with blond hair. Initially there had been some uncertainty as to whether or not he could be the son of the Yondaime, his hair and eye color being too conspicuous to ignore, but the Sandaime leaving him in the open had made them think that rather unlikely. When Naruto entered the academy years later his cringe worthy academic performance reduced unlikelihood to impossibility in the Tsuchikage's opinion. Iwa became convinced that the real Jinchuuriki was hidden away somewhere and Naruto was just a red herring or a trap, that Sarutobi was thumbing his nose at Onoki, just daring him to try something.

They still kept an eye on the boy, but it was more that they didn't know what to make of him than any definitive interest, and far more resources were spent trying to find the nonexistent 'real' Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi.

Kumo had been the next greatest threat to Naruto in Kakashi's mind, but they too had decided that making an attempt on the boy wasn't worth the risk, which had come as a surprise considering how aggressively they pursued assets as a matter of policy. Their conclusions about Naruto had been more dangerous and unsettling than Iwa's.

They'd rejected the Uzumaki heritage for the same reason that Iwa had, but they hadn't written it off as a transparent ploy. They'd managed to sneak a sensor nin in to evaluate Naruto when he was only a few years old, an event that Konoha hadn't found out about until several years after the fact. Even as a toddler Naruto's chakra was far too developed to go unnoticed.

Sealing a demon was never a simple task, and never before had it been done with so little as a few hours preparation. Such a venture was usually planned months if not years in advance, so Kumo was of the opinion that Naruto was quite likely a Jinchuuriki––but a defective one, the demon sealed too tightly to be of any use. Even being a Jinchuuriki didn't come close to explaining Naruto's ridiculous reserves, especially as even the most experienced sensor couldn't detect a hint of non-human chakra coming from the boy, and being a demon container didn't usually give more than a twenty to thirty percent boost in natural reserves with even the most permissive of seals. Any more than that meant the seal was too permeable, and the container wasn't going to survive without debilitating side effects.

So Kumo's conclusion was that Konoha had been experimenting on the child, the result of which giving him massive reserves at the cost of any sort of control. Pretending that he was an Uzumaki was just a way of deflecting suspicion if anybody noticed anything unusual about his chakra. All the major ninja villages and a few of the minor ones had experimented with artificially increasing chakra reserves with various degrees of success, but the result was always a failure in the sense that those increased reserves always came at the cost of warped chakra coils that left the subject incapable of being useful except for utilizing their new reserves to overpower suicide jutsu. Anybody with reserves significant enough to bother with the expensive operations involved had to have had enough training to make them a hundred times more useful as a ninja than a sentient exploding tag.

Kakashi wasn't a sensor nin, but he had enough skill in the art to sense for himself that Naruto had a good deal more chakra than he did. The classified reports he'd seen estimated that the boy had just above twice Kakashi's own reserves. That was nothing short of incredible, given that he had trained his reserves to be abnormally high even for his specialization as a Ninjutsu Master in order to compensate for his implanted sharingan. The number of Konoha shinobi with more chakra than Kakashi could probably be counted on one hand with fingers left over, and of those only Jiraiya likely had more chakra than Naruto. Although that was a bit of a guess, as the illusive spymaster kept the true extent of his reserves hidden at all times.

By the standards of such experiments, Naruto would have been considered a resounding success if only for the fact that he had broken records with the sheer degree to which his chakra would have been enhanced and the fact that he could perform jutsu, even if only in an apparently limited fashion. The idea of trading a Jinchuuriki's ability to use jutsu in order to turn them into a bomb was a ridiculous waste a Jinchuuriki, so the Raikage could be forgiven for making erroneous conclusion that the hasty sealing had already stripped Naruto's potential as a ninja away to the point where turning him into a suicide bomber wasn't a waste of a potentially S-class ninja anymore.

Strangely enough this left Kumo far more likely to be a danger to Naruto than Iwa, as they actually viewed him as a potential threat. They wouldn't try to kidnap him while they thought he was just a bomb, and given how inefficient suicide jutsu were there wouldn't be much point assassinating him either even taking his reserves into account.

Very few people were aware of all the important facts when it came to Naruto's heritage and the sealing. If Kakashi didn't know better he'd have thought it was impossible for things to work out the way they did on accident. Almost everything had come together far too perfectly to be a coincidence.

Naruto had been born with an unbelievable advantage. As an Uzumaki, his chakra coils and life force were already extremely strong, and the fact that his mother had been a pureblood Uzumaki meant that he'd been absorbing her potent chakra for nine months before his birth had boosted that advantage. And then he'd had the Kyuubi sealed in him right after being born, before his system had adjusted to not being able to siphon chakra from Kushina, leaving it in the perfect position to adapt to the Kyuubi. The only thing that could have possibly made Naruto more suited to being a Jinchuuriki was if his father had been an Uzumaki as well.

The integration of a Bijuu's chakra with its host's system one was generally considered the most important factor when to how useful a Jinchuuriki could be as a weapon, and getting the highest possible compatibility between the two was usually the highest priority in any sealing. The chakra system was strong enough to handle the sealing without getting damaged but still malleable enough to adapt between ten to thirteen years of age, the specifics depending on the individual.

The three best 'weaponized' Jinchuuriki had been sealed below that range, but it was considered a rather stupid risk. Any child that had coils developed strongly to even attempt such a sealing would be a powerhouse later in life given proper training, not something a village was likely to throw away on the off chance that they _might_ survive. Not to mention the consequences of a failed sealing would result in the death of countless more ninja.

Kumo's Kirābī was considered the most successful weaponized Jinchuuriki. He'd had the Hachibi sealed within him at the age of five. Why he'd been selected was a secret that they'd managed to keep from the rest of the hidden villages, but it was obvious they'd known what they were doing. Kumo had resealed the Nibi a few years back in an eleven year old girl, which suggested that whatever it was that made them confident that the Hachibi wasn't going to blow up in their faces had something to do with the container and not their sealing method. That was a relief to the rest of the hidden villages and probably saved the girl from excessive assassination attempts. The idea of Kumo having two Jinchuuriki of Kirābī's caliber was a rather scary one.

Kirigakure's current Mizukage had the Sanbi sealed within him at the age of seven. Kiri's Niidaime hadn't hid his methods, but no other village was likely to follow in his footsteps. He'd taken five years to set up a complex sealing array that could handle multiple failures and proceeded to attempt to seal the demon into child after child, his youngest and most promising candidates first. Each failure meant the death of the child, and it had taken eighteen attempts before a successful sealing.

And it didn't end there.

The Mizukage hadn't been satisfied with the level of integration, and rather than waiting to see if it improved as the seal settled he summarily had the demon ripped out and the process restarted. Twelve more attempts had resulted in Yagura. The death toll didn't end with the thirty children either. The sealing array had been designed for the sole purpose of facilitating multiple attempts at the sealing with little regards to anything else, like the safety of the operators. Every single ninja powering the massive sealing array had been contaminated by prolonged exposure to the Bijuu's chakra, over half dying painfully within weeks.

While he was nowhere near Kirābī or Yagura's level, Suna's Jinchuuriki was the one all the hidden villages were keeping a close eye on.

Sabaku no Gaara was one of a kind. Like Naruto, he was genetically predisposed to being a Jinchuuriki, although Suna kept a tight lid on the specifics of why that was. Unlike Naruto, that fact was completely intentional. The Yondaime Kazekage had selected a wife for the sole purpose of creating Gaara. His first two children hadn't met the criteria he'd been aiming for, but his second son had, allowing him to take the concept of integration to a whole new level.

The Ichibi had been sealed into Gaara in utero, before his own chakra system had even formed properly. Suna certainly hadn't let any outsiders examine the boy so all the other nations had was educated guesswork and speculation, but the general consensus was that his system had been developed by the demon's chakra, and that he very likely didn't produce his own chakra at all.

On the one hand, that meant that he could use his demon's chakra 24/7. On the other hand, that meant he _was_ using the demon's chakra 24/7, and it showed. Sabaku no Gaara was a special kind of crazy. Considering that he'd been under the mental influence of the Ichibi's chakra his entire life it was a bit surprising that he wasn't running around foaming at the mouth and trying to kill everything that moved, but his tendency to indiscriminately squish people in his general vicinity showed that he definitely wasn't shrugging off the Ichibi's mental contamination.

All in all this made Gaara a very limited shinobi despite his frightening potential. He was exceptionally good at killing things but his utility didn't really extend beyond that. He wasn't picky about who he killed either, so he didn't do well in delicate situations or team operations either.

Fortunately for Gaara there were plenty of missions that were suited to unsubtle killing machines.

It was with all this in mind that Kakashi couldn't help but feel uncomfortable as he met Naruto's glare with a mask of disinterest. He was ashamed of the vague sense of disappointment in the boy that he felt, something that Naruto certainly hadn't done anything to deserve.

Kakashi hadn't had a concrete image of what Naruto should be like, but the boy in front of him just wasn't connecting to any expectations he'd had for Minato's son. There was some part of him that had always taken for granted that he'd get the opportunity to be for Naruto what Minato had been for him, a cross between a teacher, an older brother, and a father figure. He'd known that Naruto wasn't going to be a mini-Minato, but he was having a hard time seeing much of his teacher at all in the boy.

Sure, he had the same hair and eye color as his father, and his facial structure was even starting to resemble a young Minato's. However, it was hard to relate the two beyond the superficial.

Like Naruto, a young Minato had also expressed a desire to be the Hokage in order to be acknowledged, although his motivation wasn't the quite the same as his son's. Wanting to be a Kage wasn't an uncommon childhood aspiration. Who wouldn't dream of being the strongest and most respected ninja in their village?

It was a bit weird to characterize Minato's childhood desire to become the Hokage as nothing fundamentally special given that he did end up getting the position, but was how he'd started out. His reasons had changed and gained depth as he grew and matured, but they had never been as intrinsic to the core of his character as Naruto's motivations were to his.

The idea that he could one day become the Hokage and rid himself of the scorn of the village was perhaps the only thing keeping Naruto's self-worth and optimism intact over the years. It wasn't like he'd ever been physically mistreated and it was rare that anyone went out of their way to try and make his day any worse, but the social isolation he faced was far from insignificant.

The vast majority of the citizens of Konoha, civilian and shinobi alike, wanted as little contact with the boy as possible, and they especially didn't want him around their children. There'd been something of an outcry when he'd been admitted to the academy. Things had settled a bit when it became apparent that Naruto wasn't snapping and killing anybody who hurt him in a spar, but many parents still chose to hold their children back until the next class intake just in case.

It wasn't that they thought he was the Kyuubi (except in a few rare cases) but they were acutely aware that he was a Jinchuuriki. The villagers who had only a layman's knowledge of sealing and the notion of a Jinchuuriki didn't need to think about things very much before deciding to stay the hell away from Naruto, but learning more about the situation hadn't reassured anyone. Jinchuuriki as a group _were_ more naturally dangerous than just about anyone else.

An unavoidable fact of life is that children don't always get along. In a ninja village that sometimes escalated a bit beyond bruises and tears, but even the children from clans weren't usually capable of doing anything particularly damaging before they'd been taught enough restraint, especially since the fall of the Uchiha clan. Pressuring six year olds' to learn how to breath fire in order to prove their worth hadn't been the most prudent tradition, but they'd managed to avoid anything more serious than some ugly scars.

No one wanted to risk having their kid be the one that hurt Naruto, pissed him off, or upset him in any way. It wasn't a secret that a Jinchuuriki drawing upon their demon's chakra could be triggered by strong negative emotions, and the idea that a little roughhousing gone wrong or name calling gone too far could involve Naruto was terrifying to parents. That was even assuming that he was a normal Jinchuuriki and ignoring the excessively potent nature of the Kyuubi's chakra.

Konoha was no less aware of the amount of time the Yondaime had to prepare for the sealing than Kumo, resulting in much the same kind of conclusion: A defective seal. Rather than thinking that the seal was too tight, the citizens were scared that it might not be tight enough. What if he were constantly radiating small amounts of the Kyuubi's chakra or was more likely to draw on it in a fit of anger? Or both?

The damage the Kyuubi had wrought on the village wasn't limited to what it had directly done. Its toxic chakra had hurt the village in unprecedented ways. A horrifying number of miscarriages could be linked to that night. There was a reason Naruto was one of the youngest in his class.

The adverse effects exposure to a Bijuu's were nothing new or surprising, but the extent to which the relatively brief attack had affected the village was concerning. It didn't seem like it could be explained just by the fact that the Kyuubi was the most powerful Bijuu, but that was the only viable explanation floating around.

Although Naruto had never exhibited any signs that he was giving off any damaging chakra or drawing on the Kyuubi's chakra at all, Konoha as a whole just didn't have confidence in his seal. The children picked up on the attitudes of the adults, and without knowing _why_ playing with or hanging around Naruto was a bad thing had internalized the idea that he was somehow different in a bad way.

Without knowing about the Kyuubi it just wasn't possible to see Naruto as dangerous, so their focus landed on what they did know about him. His poor grades, social awkwardness, proclamations of one day becoming the Hokage, and constant striving for attention seemed to paint a picture of a clown with delusions of grandeur. So Naruto's efforts to make the village acknowledge his existence became just another reason to ignore and ostracize him.

The Sandaime leaving Naruto out in the open had turned out to be a brilliant move on many more levels than Kakashi had believed possible when it came to keeping Naruto safe with minimal effort, but the end result was anything but satisfying to Kakashi.

Naruto deserved better than this. He should have been brought up in secret and not subjected to the isolated life he'd been left adrift in. As it stood he was Minato's son in blood only. Kakashi wished that he could have been in a position to raise Naruto like Minato would have wanted, but he'd been far from fit to take care of an infant thirteen years ago. Looking back he thought even his no doubt fumbling attempts at raising a child would have been better than what Naruto had endured, but he knew for a fact that Sarutobi wouldn't have allowed it.

Kakashi had tried to take custody Naruto around the time the boy had entered the academy but had been firmly denied. It was obvious to him that the boy needed an adult in his life full time. Sarutobi was a kind and caring grandfather figure, and Ichiraku Teuchi and Ayame were also great influences in his life, but for all intents and purposes Naruto had been left to raise himself.

When this team had been officially assigned to him Kakashi had been firmly warned that he wasn't to treat Naruto any differently than if he were just another orphan. No teaching him about Minato's philosophies or passing on his personal techniques. Sarutobi had said they could revisit the issue when Naruto became a Chuunin, but it seemed absurd that he would ever be promoted under these handicaps.

Kakashi realized that he'd been staring at Naruto too long. He'd spent only a few moments visibly looking at Sasuke and Sakura, but he couldn't help but wander in his thoughts when he got to Naruto. He'd been maintaining eye contact with the boy for about eight seconds in silence, none of them having recovered sufficiently from Kakashi's odd opening line to brave saying anything.

Naruto had been visibly uncomfortable under Kakashi's scrutiny. He'd been understandably confused when it became obvious that he'd been singled out, his body betraying his discomfort almost immediately through nearly invisible fidgeting and shifting. Nothing his classmates would be able to detect, but ANBU Captains were trained be a bit more observant than recently graduated academy students. It was Naruto suddenly stilling that was the warning sign that had pulled Kakashi from his thoughts.

The nervousness in his body language had been replaced by signs of an aggressive fight or flight response and defiance. That didn't mean Naruto was about to attack or run away, but it did indicate that he thought himself as under attack or on the defensive from Kakashi in some way. Given his recent experience with Mizuki and revelation of why he was viewed in such a poor light by most of the village, Kakashi could make a guess as to the kind of conclusion Naruto had likely come to.

_Not exactly my idea of a great first impression_, Kakashi thought to himself, ignoring that even without the judgmental staring he'd still called his students boring to their face within moments of officially laying eyes on them. Pretending he hadn't been staring wouldn't undo the damage, so he'd have to improvise.

"You do realize wearing that much orange is weird, right?" Kakashi remarked, as though that had been the reason behind his extended observation.

"W-Weird?" Naruto spluttered indignantly, totally caught off guard, as Sakura giggled and Sasuke's face tightened to stifle a smile. "Orange isn't weird, it's awesome! You're weird, with your weird, um, hair! You have weird hair, and a weird mouth you weirdo!"

"I have a weird mouth?" Kakashi questioned amusedly, satisfied with his deflection. Naruto's body language had immediately opened up as his fear that he was being judged for the Kyuubi was dealt with. "Is it orange?"

"No, or it would be awesome!" Naruto winced as his brain apparently caught up with his mouth. "Ok, maybe that wouldn't be awesome. But you wouldn't need to wear a mask if you had a normal mouth. It's probably all fat and fuzzy. With warts!"

"Huh? Did you say something?" Kakashi asked, utilizing his favorite tactic for dealing with things he couldn't be bothered with: pretending they never happened or didn't exist.

"Freaking weirdo," Naruto muttered.

"How about we take this to the roof," Kakashi said over Naruto's grumbling. "It's too nice a day to waste cooped up inside."

The truth was that the strong smell of Sakura's perfume was irritating his sensitive sense of smell in the confined space of the classroom. He was sure all the other girls had prettied themselves up similarly for their first official day as ninja, but given how long ago they'd left she was the only one committing assault on his senses with teenage vanity.

"Then why did you make us wait in here for _three hours_," Naruto growled tersely.

Kakashi strolled out of the room, followed quickly by Sakura and Sasuke. He heard Naruto faintly as he talked to himself, followed by the sound of displaced air and his chakra signature abruptly vanishing.

"This is so not my problem. He's all yours, Boss."

Neither Sakura nor Sasuke's hearing was as acute as Kakashi's, but they'd heard him say something and realized that he'd remained in the classroom. Sakura growled as she went back to the classroom entrance from where they'd gotten to in the hallway. She hadn't expressed any displeasure with Kakashi for making them wait, but she had no such restraint when it came to her blond teammate holding them up.

"This is not the time for your stupid games, Naru…to?" She stopped abruptly in confusion as she looked into the classroom, discovering that he'd disappeared. Well, he'd actually dispelled, but the girl didn't know he'd been a Shadow Clone. "Na-ru-to!" she bit out each syllable like a curse as she stomped into the classroom, intent on finding out where he was hiding. "Get your butt out here!"

After a few minutes of increasingly disturbing threats, the clattering of chairs being thrown around, and then finally a frustrated scream that actually sent a shiver down Kakashi's spine, Sakura reappeared from the classroom.

"Naruto's not in the classroom, sensei," she informed him demurely, speaking to him directly for the first time with a sweet smile on her face, not a hair out of place.

"Let's just head to the roof and take things from there." Acting like nothing out of the ordinary had just happen was definitely the way to deal with that.

_Wasn't she supposed to be the normal one?_ Kakashi wondered, not very hopefully.

* * *

Sakura definitely wasn't happy having to wait for Naruto before they could begin when they got to the roof, but thankfully the fact that Sasuke was remaining completely calm and unbothered was keeping her in check.

Personally, Kakashi was more impressed than annoyed. Sure, leaving a clone to meet your sensei for the first time was a bit rude, but he was familiar with just how difficult it was to get a clone to do something you yourself didn't feel like doing. They did have the exact same mindset as their creators, and with the exception of dying or being maimed, had pretty much the same kinds of dislikes. They also had a clear advantage in that they could escape any semblance of responsibility by dispelling. For a personality type like Naruto's, that last part was probably very significant.

Kakashi had once spent an hour and a half trying to convince his clone to deal with a clogged toilet, arguing that it was a necessity because he didn't want any lingering smells attached to him when he went on a date. The clone had wanted to read cover to cover the real copy of the Platinum Plus Edition Icha Icha Beach Wars specially printed (with Jiraiya's permission) that had Kakashi's name replacing the original protagonist's. The one that he never let leave his person.

Of course that was unacceptable. He'd never let another man (not even himself) handle his most beloved possession, so he'd tried to convince clone Kakashi to read the shadow copy it had come equipped with. Yurika had not been impressed the next day when he'd explained to her that he'd been morally obligated to finish a debate about the nature of reality and value of frailty with himself. He didn't think she had the right to complain, given that she'd only waited thirty minutes before deciding that he'd stood her up. Everyone knew his attitude towards punctuality, so she should have taken his showing up only one hour and forty-five minutes late for the compliment that it was. She hadn't appreciated it when he tried to explain that either.

Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke had all reacted differently to his lack of punctuality. Naruto had been predictably straightforward in expressing his anger at having to wait for him, Sakura had redirected her anger at the blameless classroom, and Sasuke seemed to brush off his annoyance.

On the surface, Sasuke appeared to be the most mature of the three. In fact, many of his teachers had been praising him in their reports since he was seven years old as 'the most mature and self-possessed academy student I've ever known' and similar sentiments. The smarter ones had known better than to assume that he'd gotten marvelous therapy after the destruction of his clan and come out six months later the most well-adjusted kid in the village.

Sasuke had gotten (and continued to get) top-notch therapy and it had been effective, but he was a long way off from mentally healthy. The reason he appeared so mature was that he didn't care for the validation of his peers or pretty much anyone else. That meant he never felt the normal pressures to adapt himself to a group of friends, or put any effort into forming or maintaining relationships.

While immunity to peer pressure might seem like a desirable personality trait it was extremely troubling to see in a child. It removed any incentive to learn how interact socially. Sasuke's complete disregard for the opinions of his classmates would have resulted his being ignored right back if it weren't for his 'coolness factor'. His obvious skills, status as the 'prince' of an elite clan, and tragic backstory had prompted the social hierarchy of his class elevate him to a position of prestige instead of pushing him to the fringe like it would have if he were less noteworthy.

Naruto showed up a few minutes after his clone had dispelled, flipping over the fence surrounding the roof. Judging by the speed by which Kakashi had sensed him come up the building, he had to have been using chakra to run up the side.

That was both a pleasant and unpleasant surprise to the Jounin. It meant that Naruto hadn't been pointlessly wasting his time trying the leaf concentration exercise, but had worked 'up' to it by first completing the tree climbing exercise. It also meant that someone had trained him. There were a lot of good reasons not to teach any advanced chakra exercises to academy students, and while many of them didn't apply to Naruto's unique situation the fact that he'd initially been failed for not being able to perform the basic clone technique meant that the academy teachers hadn't cared about or been aware of his need for such training.

Kakashi hadn't been allowed to train Naruto, but clearly _someone_ had. Maybe it had only been to address the obvious issue of his chakra control, but that should have been _his_ job.

"Did you have fun _making us wait_?" Sakura began in a normal tone of voice, before beginning to emit a passable imitation of killing intent partway through her sentence.

"Eh he he," Naruto laughed weakly, his customary smile faltering as the girl stared him down. His eyes darted around nervously, refusing to meet hers. "There was… um… what happened was… I… got lost on the road of life?"

"What?" Sakura's eyebrow was twitching. She clearly wasn't impressed. "You know what? I don't care. We've wasted enough time with your nonsense."

Naruto wilted at her harsh dismissal. He moved to sit down beside her, but her accusing stare made him change his mind half to the ground and he moved to the other side of Sasuke.

Kakashi was puzzled and suspicious. Naruto being late wasn't suspicious. He had a fair idea of how that had happened. Naruto being late and then throwing out that particular excuse could hardly be a coincidence, but he gave no indication that he knew anything about Kakashi.

Could it be that he was just casting around for an excuse that didn't admit he'd ditched his teammates, and it really was a coincidence?

"Now that we're all here, let's begin with you three introducing yourselves," Kakashi said, putting his suspicions aside for the moment.

"What do you want to know?" Sakura asked, her demeanor changing the instant she focused on him.

"How about your likes, dislikes, and dreams for the future," Kakashi threw out casually. "Things like that."

"Why don't you show us how it's done?" Naruto challenged.

"Yeah, we don't know anything about you either," Sakura agreed. "Not even your name."

"Fair enough," Kakashi agreed facetiously. He knew plenty about them. "My name is Hatake Kakashi. I have no desire to tell you my likes and dislikes. Dreams for the future? I've got some of those. And some nice hobbies as well."

"What the hell was that?" Naruto complained. "All you told us was your name."

"Would you have preferred it if I didn't tell you my name? It's your turn, starting on the right."

"Uh, our right or your right?" Naruto asked.

"My right, of course. Why would I care about your rights?" Kakashi quipped.

"Ok!" Naruto said, taking his clarification at face value. Sasuke caught the double meaning, and narrowed his eyes as he tried to figure out if Kakashi had meant it.

"Yosh! My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I like ramen! Cup ramen is nice, but Ichiraku's ramen is the best! Especially for breakfast. I like it even more when Iruka-sensei pays for my ramen, or when Ichiraku-ji lets me eat all I can on my birthday. I also like training and awesome jutsu! And friendly people, and Ukki-kun, he's my pet plant by the way, and I like other plants too, but Ukki-kun is—"

"You don't need to tell us _everything_ you like," Kakashi interrupted, as it was clear that Naruto was perfectly happy continuing indefinitely. "And plants don't count as pets."

"Plants do too count as pets," Naruto pouted. "If you can have a pet rock, a pet plant is way more awesome. And I wasn't saying everything, just the important stuff."

"If you say so." _A pet rock?_

"My dream? Wait, dislikes first. Well, number one would have to be the three minutes that I have to wait for ramen to cook, especially when I steal my ramen before I can eat it. And my dream…"

_Does this kid listen to what comes out of his mouth? _Kakashi wondered. Sure, he could sort of figure out what that had meant, knowing what he did about Kage Bunshin. But Sasuke and Sakura were probably thinking that Naruto had lost his marbles judging by how they were looking at him. To be fair, it was obvious that Naruto had gotten a bit distracted when he mentioned his dream, so he probably wasn't paying much attention to his backtracking. It wasn't hard to guess why either.

How had Naruto ambition to become Hokage been affected by the knowledge of the Kyuubi? Kakashi hadn't heard any reports or seen any evidence that Naruto had been hit too hard by the knowledge. In a way, Mizuki might have done them a favor with the clumsy reveal. Sure, the idea that the villagers actually thought he was the Kyuubi was patently absurd. Of the rare few that did, most actually belonged to a weird cult that actually worshipped him as the Kyuubi's incarnation of mercy or something wacky like that. They were generally harmless, and some the gifts they tried to give Naruto were deemed ok enough of that the Sandaime actually let them get to him.

If Naruto believed that the problem was that they thought he was the Kyuubi, then he could just show he wasn't and the situation could only improve from there. That hopefully meant he could deal with part of the revelation now, and the harsh reality that even if people thought he was the nicest guy they'd ever met, they might still fear him, want to use him as a weapon, or both.

Naruto had trailed off as he thought about what to say, but his expression cleared as he reached some kind of conclusion.

"My dream is to surpass every Hokage, every ninja that ever lived," Naruto said, his determination showing so firmly that even Sasuke and Sakura were taken aback. And as quickly as the moment had come, it was gone as Naruto's serious face shifted into a pensive frown. "Although once I had a dream that I took over all the villages and ended all the fighting so that everybody could focus on important stuff." Naruto nodded sagely, a smile on his face as he thought about it. "Like making ramen. Yeah, that would be the next step."

_Well, that was interesting,_ Kakashi thought, repressing the urge to facepalm. _And weird, and maybe a bit disturbing._

"Oh, and I have hobbies!" Naruto continued excitedly, his serious and mature demeanor having completely evaporated. "Pranks, trying new kinds of ramen, training, gardening, inventing awesome jutsu—"

"That perverted jutsu is _not awesome!_" Sakura interrupted hotly.

"Not that one. There's… other ones," he protested unconvincingly, unwilling to provide details.

"Even more perverted?" Sakura asked dangerously.

"Of course not! Not that there's anything wrong with Oiroke no Jutsu," he grumbled.

Sakura's eye twitched menacingly.

"I mean, um, it's Sasuke's turn!" Naruto threw out, panicking.

"That sounds right to me," Kakashi cut in. Not that he didn't want to hear more about this 'Oiroke no Jutsu' but as amusing as the two bickering were, there was a point to this meeting.

Sasuke rolled his eyes, but otherwise didn't move from the position he'd maintained since the moment he'd sat down. Elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced in front his face.

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke. There are a lots of things I dislike and I don't really like anything. I wouldn't say that I have a dream, but I have an ambition." His voice, which had been level and uncaring to that point tightened along with his fingers. "The resurrection of my clan, and to kill a certain man."

Something about the way he subtly emphasized the word kill made everything else he said revolve around it chillingly. Much like how everything else in his life revolved around the desire to kill his brother.

The trauma of the Uchiha clan being massacred followed by mental torture, all at the hands of his brother, had shattered him. The recovery that he made had been built upon the strongest parts of his identity that had been left, resulting in an understandably single-minded obsession on his part. For Sasuke, everything came back to his what he considered his duty to the clan, and anything that even hinted at getting in the way of that was treated with disdain at best, explosive fury at worst.

Kakashi could relate, on some level. His own situation with his father's suicide didn't measure up to the tragedy of the Uchiha clan, but few in the village could claim anything on that level. What was similar between them was that the loss of their respective fathers had left them unable to fulfill their expectations. Kakashi had come to terms with his father's suicide, but Sasuke was still in a horrible mental position.

Uchiha Fugaku had been a stoic man, but the pride he felt in his eldest son had always been obvious. Sasuke had always held his brother in the highest regard, but had always hungered for his father's pride. He'd always wanted his father to look at him like he did Itachi, but despite his natural talent it was clear he wasn't the same kind of prodigy as his elder brother.

Itachi had been a proxy father figure, his acknowledgement of Sasuke a very important support for his self-esteem. Fugaku dying at Itachi's hand had destroyed any chance for Sasuke to gain his father's pride and respect, but the psychological reports that Kakashi had read actually suggested that the loss of Itachi had been more traumatic than the rest of the clan put together.

Sasuke wanted Itachi's respect and he hated himself for it. He wanted his father's respect, which was essentially impossible. There were two goals that he had that were keeping him (relatively) sane. The first and most important was to utterly destroy Itachi, as proving himself superior to his brother would be the closest he could get to gaining acknowledgment from his father and the best way to punish Itachi for abandoning him. The second was to rebuild the Uchiha clan as the greatest clan in the Elemental Nations, also to please the memory of his father.

Killing Itachi was a problematic goal, especially given Sasuke's need to prove himself unquestionably superior. It wasn't something he realized consciously, but simply killing Itachi very likely wouldn't satisfy him. That wouldn't be enough to prove his worth to himself. He'd need to beat down Itachi in direct combat.

At thirteen, Sasuke had graduated the academy at the top of his class. At thirteen, Itachi had succeeded Kakashi as an ANBU Captain. Itachi had gained his Sharingan at the age of eight, whereas Sasuke didn't even know if he was one of the few Uchiha actually capable of unlocking his bloodline. What he wanted was more or less suicidal.

Naruto had no trouble breaking the tension caused by Sasuke's introduction.

"It's not me, right? Because that's complete overkill if this is about the pheromones and Inuzuka kennel. That was just supposed involve Akamaru."

"That was you?" Sasuke hissed, his composure broken.

"Um, did you somehow get that impression?" Naruto hedged nervously. "Because that was just speculation. It sounds like something Kiba would do, doesn't it? That guy, he's always messing things up."

"Of course it was you," Sasuke sneered. "And if I wanted you dead, that's not something that would be difficult enough to be an ambition. It would just be a chore."

"Hey!" Naruto said, before reconsidering. "Actually, if that means you don't want to kill me, that's completely fine."

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far," Sasuke said, smirking darkly.

"You can be really scary sometimes."

Sasuke just shrugged, maybe conceding the point.

_I have no idea what's going on,_ Kakashi admitted to himself. Was it banter, or was Naruto's obliviousness volunteering him for a place on Sasuke's hit list? The Uchiha seemed genuinely amused, at least in small intervals, which was incredibly rare for him. But he seemed just as genuinely hostile.

_What moron thought putting these two on the same team was a good idea?_

"Ok, and lastly the girl."

"My name is Haruno Sakura, and the thing I like is…" she looked at Sasuke, blushing deeply. "Well, the person I like is… and, uhm, my dream for the future is…uhm?" She started giggling, still staring at Sasuke, whose eyes widened in alarm.

"What I dislike is Naruto." Her mood shifted instantly as she glared at the blond, who hung his head dejectedly. And just as suddenly she was blushing and gazing at Sasuke again. "My hobby is…"

_Seriously, did someone think up the least cohesive team possible and say 'this'll be hilarious!'?_

"That's it for the introductions then," Kakashi said, when it was clear that Sakura was finished. "Tomorrow you'll start your duties as shinobi."

"Duties? Duties!" Naruto perked up instantly. "Yeah! What kinds of duties?"

"First, we're going to do something with just the four of us," Kakashi said, chuckling ominously.

* * *

"Where the hell am I?" Naruto wondered out loud.

After having so much of his day wasted by waiting around for his new sensei, he'd gone a little overboard afterwards on the physical conditioning. He hadn't fallen asleep in a training ground again, as that was a mistake he wasn't likely to repeat, but the next thing he knew he was in a dark tunnel.

"Ew," he complained as his foot sloshed in the ankle deep water.

The rusty metal pipes lining the tunnel made the place look somewhat like a larger version of the sewer tunnels that ran underneath Konoha. He'd hidden down there after pranking the Hyuuga's once. Thankfully the smell wasn't the same. The air was a little stale and damp, but there wasn't even a hint of waste and chemicals.

Maybe it was a genjutsu? Sneaking into his room to do put him in an illusion sounded like the kind of thing Kakashi-sensei might do. He was way weird like that.

There was a section in Hiruzen's book about how ninjutsu and genjutsu could be used together. It was one of the many kinds of things that he wasn't even close to being able to do yet, as he hadn't even tried out regular genjutsu yet but he liked to read about them anyway. He'd always dismissed genjutsu as useless and wimpy, but reading about collaborative jutsu and hybrids involving illusions had clued him into just how dangerous and awesome the field could really be.

Since he didn't want to end up attacking a tree with his super awesome ninjutsu while his enemy just bashed his head in from behind, Naruto had been looking into genjutsu. Specifically how to defend himself from it, as very precise chakra control was needed for more than the most basic of illusions. Due to the vast array of unfamiliar words (like prosencephalon), mind-bending (in a mind-hurting kind of way) concepts, and the lack of immediate benefits when compared to training in ninjutsu or taijutsu, he hadn't spent too much time studying genjutsu yet. That was an oversight he was regretting rather keenly at the moment.

According to the most understandable reference he'd found on the subject, most genjutsu use relied on the target not noticing they were being affected. Sometimes subtle genjutsu could be used on even experienced shinobi for days, or an obvious one could achieve its purpose in the few seconds it took for the target to realize it was there and dispel it. The easier the genjutsu was to use, the easier it tended to be to deal with.

Genjutsu was about deception, so making them difficult to detect was generally much more useful than making them hard to break. Techniques that were designed to resist being dispelled rather than being detected was a much more difficult branch of the art, and much more rare to encounter.

If this was a genjutsu, it was far too obvious to be relying on its hiddenness to be effective, which supported Naruto's suspicion that it was some sort of test. Or that weirdo screwing with him. So either the basic techniques he knew had a decent chance of getting him out of this, or Kakashi was a crazy Genjutsu Master who messed with people for fun.

_Oh shit,_ _that sounds like Kakashi-sensei,_ Naruto realized as he thought about what he knew about the man. This experience was far too immersive and detailed to be have a simple solution. Regardless, what little he knew about dealing with genjutsu was all he had to work with.

Naruto relaxed and began focusing as best he could on his chakra flow. As soon as he started paying attention to it he realized that something was wrong. Normally his chakra raged against any attempt to control it, something he'd been making slow but steady improvements to, but now it eagerly responded to his whims. Under normal conditions that would have delighted him, but in the context of a genjutsu messing with his senses, it terrified him. How could he know that what he thought he was doing with his chakra was actually happening? This was on a completely different level than what he knew how to deal with.

There were three methods of affecting genjutsu that Naruto knew about and thought he could use. The three most basic chakra based methods were _Pulse_, _Suppress_, and _Overwhelm_. While _Pulse_ was the stock method for dealing with common genjutsu, this seemed anything but, and the added problem of his perception of his chakra being wonky skewed things even further. _Suppress_ felt like his best bet.

When he'd first tried to slow down the chakra flow in his body after reading about it, nothing really happened. Now though, he could feel it calming, and it was actually very relaxing. And it even seemed to be working. The light had faded away and he couldn't feel the water at his feet anymore. There was a definite limit though, and after holding it for half a minute without any sign of the illusion breaking he gave it up as a lost cause. As soon as he let go the dim light returned and water at his feet rose again.

_Well shit._ Naruto frowned. That had sort of seemed like it was doing something, but not enough apparently. So maybe going the other direction would work. He'd had more luck with _Overwhelm_ in his training anyways. Generally speaking, anywhere _Overwhelm_ worked _Suppress_ worked better, more efficiently, and far more subtly; but he didn't have any better ideas.

As expected, ramping up his chakra flow was easy for him. Like with _Suppress_ it worked far better than ever before. He pushed it far further than he ever had, until it felt like there was molten euphoria in his veins, making him lightheaded.

The tunnel had gotten almost painfully bright, the ground beneath him was vibrating, and the water at his feet was… flowing? Naruto suddenly became aware of an ominous rushing sound, and the water having risen to his knees did not bode well.

"Oh, not good," Naruto said weakly as he caught sight of the incoming wall of water. "Fu—"

The water smashed into him before he could do anything, first impacting him straight on and then bouncing him off the ground. Not that there was anything he could have done with more time. Dazed, he couldn't do anything but try and hold his breath as the water dragged him along. He couldn't even tell which way was which with the speed he was going.

Just when he thought he wouldn't last any longer, he was suddenly falling through the air. He had the presence of mind to take a deep breath and angle himself into a dive. It wasn't perfect, but he managed to avoid belly-flopping on the surface of the water a hundred feet below.

He swam up to the surface, gasping and coughing as he broke it. Every inch of his body ached, so he just lay on his back, floating and recovering for a few minutes.

"I'm going to get you for this Kakashi," he threatened when his breath came back to him. "I'm going to drown you in orange paint, you WEIRDO ASSWIPE!" Applying chakra to his palms, he hoisted himself onto the surface the water, shaking some of the cold water off when he was fully standing.

There was no obvious light source, but the area around him was dimly lit. There was darkness in every direction, and he couldn't see anything except a row of thick iron poles thirty feet away from him, spaced evenly about fifteen feet apart and stretching up into the dark. And hanging between two of them was a paper with a familiar looking inscription on it.

"A seal?" Naruto wondered. What exactly was going on here?

"**Yes."**

Naruto felt chills go down his spine at the deep, heavy voice that reverberated through him. The sound seeped into the air like it was a physical phenomenon. Slowly, and fearfully, he looked up.

On the other side of the bars two large, glowing red eyes stared down at him. The slit pupils were probably as tall as he was.

"This," Naruto began weakly, swallowing as he tried to get the words out. "This isn't a genjutsu, is it."

"**No."**

Naruto shivered at the sound. He had no idea how he stood there, waiting. It could have been seconds, or minutes, but the silence and those glowing eyes watching him became intolerable.

"So… hi?" His voice was a little higher pitched than he would have liked, but at least it wasn't the terrified screaming of a six year old girl that he could feel trying to work its way out of him. He couldn't see anything but the eyes and a general silhouette, but there was no doubt that the Kyuubi no Yoko was on the other side of those bars.

Five seconds passed.

"**You're smaller than I would have expected."**

Naruto may have been scared out of his mind, but he wasn't about to let that get in the way of his pride.

"I'm average for my age! You're just too big, so don't go picking fun at me, you… you furball!" Naruto shouted, his nervousness fading with each word he successfully managed not to choke on. "Um, not that I'm saying you're fat or anything. Just big? I'm sure you're the perfect size for a… giant…nine tailed… fox." There wasn't any reason not to be a bit polite, after all.

"**What is your name, child?"**

"Uzumaki Naruto." At least it didn't seem offended. "Um, do you have a name? Or something you'd like me to call you?"

"**Uzumaki? Not unexpected. You did something."**

"Um, what?" Naruto asked, nonplussed by the abrupt accusation.

"**I don't know. You did something. I don't feel anything from the outside in this cage. Not even the passing of time," **The Kyuubi said, its voice rising in timber and tempo.** "But this, I felt. Uzumaki Naruto… **_**What did you do?**_**"**

The last four words boomed out with such force that Naruto almost fell over. An almost tangible pressure bore down on him, emanating from those glowing eyes. It was hard to breathe.

"Could you be more specific?" Naruto suggested hopefully. Having the Kyuubi angry at him wasn't something he really wanted, even with the (hopefully) impregnable seal between. "I promise I won't do it again."

"**You misunderstand, **_**Uzumaki. **_**Find out what you did. I will bring you back here when you do it again. It will be easier next time."**

"You think I'm going to do something just because a demon tells me to?" Naruto retorted.

"**Not because I have commanded it. Whatever you have done cannot be undone. Making you aware of this has only sped up the process, Uzumaki. Even if you do not replicate it, whatever you have done will manifest itself. And you will turn to me for help, because only I will be able to."**

Naruto frowned. "Well, what did I do to myself that's so important? And why are you making such a big deal out my being an Uzumaki? You said it was 'not unexpected'. What does that even mean?"

"**I don't know what you've done," **the Kyuubi admitted, **"but it was something of a nature I haven't felt for a very long time. And of course you'd be an Uzumaki. Even if that hair of yours is a bit misleading. Your chakra definitely fits."**

"My… hair?" Naruto asked, baffled. "My chakra? What?"

"**You don't know?"**

Naruto shook his head numbly. The Kyuubi knew something about his family. The Kyuubi. What was going on?

"**You don't know. How can you not…" **The Kyuubi trailed off, before bursting out into booming laughter.

The sound startled Naruto so badly he lost his concentration and fell back into the water. He came up sputtering.

"Hey, shut up!" Naruto yelled as he got back on top of the water. "Tell me what you mean! STOP LAUGHING!" There was no way that he could be heard over the laughter.

"**Your clan is," **The Kyuubi forced out through its sniggering, which was disturbing, **"Hehe, your clan, the Uzumaki are, or were, the—"**

Glowing golden chains shot through the air, passing through the bars to snake around the demon, who tried to scramble back.

"**No no NO—"**

The chains whipped around its jaws, snapping them shut with a sound like a thunderclap. Naruto got his first actual look at the Kyuubi, illuminated by the light of the chains for a brief moment before it was dragged underwater, struggling violently. Naruto would never forget the look on its face, the eyes that had so terrified him wide and bulging in fear.

The Kyuubi was scared shitless.

The water in the cage frothed and whipped around, a tail or limb occasionally surfacing, but it was as if there was an invisible barrier between the bars of the cage stopping any of the waves from coming through. Glowing inscriptions had appeared on the bars, and the ink on the paper seal was writhing.

Naruto turned around as he tracked the many chains to the source on his side of the cage.

Standing there with an expression of intense concentration and strain on her face, gripping two of the chains and with many more coming out of the wide sleeves of her pure white Kimono, was the most beautiful woman Naruto had ever seen.

For a moment, he could do nothing but stare, arrested by her presence. She had long, flowing dark red hair down to her ankles. Her pale skin was flawless, marked only by a small diamond shaped mark on her forehead. Green-blue eyes pierced into his own as they met.

"Who—"

"You must leave!" She bit out tersely. Even her voice was exquisite, lilting and melodic. "It isn't safe for you here. The more contact you have with the beast, the more dangerous it will be."

"But I don't—"

"_**GO**_!" Her voice took on an odd dual tone, resonating in his head. He tried speak again, explain that he didn't know how to go anywhere from this place, but everything was fuzzing out like he was falling asleep.

As soon as Naruto faded away, the strain disappeared from the woman's face. She walked leisurely to the cage, passing through the bars without hesitation. Rather the soaking her, the water being flung around bent around her form as though in avoidance.

She stopped in the middle of the chaos, casually pulling on one of the chains. The Kyuubi's head was drawn out of the water not five feet from her, bring them eye to eye. Or eye to woman given the difference in sizes. The Kyuubi stilled with a final muffled growl, acknowledging the futility of its struggle.

"Why did you bring him here?" The woman asked coldly. Her face might as well have been carved from ice for all the emotion it showed. The Kyuubi ignored her question in favor of its own as the chains around its jaws loosened.

"**How can you be here? You're not a part of the seal. I would have known. You can't be here. You can't be out there. But you are, aren't you?"**

"I have no interest in rectifying your ignorance, beast. You knew better, but you brought him here anyways. Why?"

The Kyuubi stared at her for a few moments, but a slight tightening of the chains prompted an answer.

"**Even Bijuu get bored. Meeting my newest prison, however distasteful, momentarily seemed like a suitable distraction. I was under the impression that you were dead, so what would have been the harm?"**

"Don't think for a moment I believe that. Keep your secrets if you wish. You haven't said anything that would compromise him, and you won't if you don't want to spend the rest of your time here chained under water."

The chakra chains abruptly dissipated as she turned around and walked away casually, completely unconcerned about the demon in the cage with her. She paused, turning to face him when she was on the other side of the bars.

"Do not bring him here again. I didn't know this seal allowed you two to communicate before, but it won't take me so long to respond now that I'm aware of it. Although I suppose I should thank you for your creativity, as this link could prove useful to me in the future."

She faded away as if she were a mirage, just in time to avoid hearing the Kyuubi howl in anguished fury.

"**Your arrogance will be your undoing!" **The Kyuubi raged at the empty cell. **"You missed it! You were here, and you missed it Mito!"**

* * *

_As requested, I covered more than five minutes this time XD._

_I hope you liked the little twist with Mito. Now you get to wonder where I'm going with all this. I was planning on hiding this until quite a bit later, but it just fit so well in this scene that I didn't have choice. And yeah, Naruto's more than a little dazzled._

_There's a link in my profile to the picture that inspired her description._

_So, lots of stuff going on in this chapter, despite the lack of awesome ninjutsu. You'll see some of what Naruto's been working on in the next chapter with the bell test. The plan was for this chapter to get through the test, but Kakashi's take on his students kind of mutated and took over the chapter. I didn't intend for it to get that detailed, but it happened. Again, POV is a subjective lens. Kakashi knows a lot, but no guarantees that he's correct about everything._

_I'm not sure about whether or not he knew Kushina was a Jinchuuriki in canon, but in here he doesn't._

_The usual depictions of the stupid villagers horribly mistreating what they think is a demon and Sarutobi being a moron about dealing with it, or purposely letting it go on because he's evil is rather off putting in my opinion. But if you want to keep with canon, you have to acknowledge some weirdness about the way he's treated, the lack of training, and the way he was raised. Or not raised. Canon doesn't support the idea of any physical abuse. Not even the clichéd malnourishment. He's six months younger than Sakura at the beginning of the series and three centimeters shorter. And she's pretty tall for their group. Mental abuse? To an extent. He's definitely socially isolated._

_This take was something I developed after closing the what seemed like the thousandth 'five year old Naruto with surprisingly good vocabulary gets the crap beat out of him by a mob of villagers/chuunin/ANBU' in disgust. I'm hoping that it gives a more believable rationale for the situation. I've never seen anything quite like it, but nothing new under the sun and all that, so I'm betting someone thought of it before me. _

_Anyways, let me know what you thought of it? Liked it, hated it, needs more salt?_


	4. Team 7, part 2

_Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Batteries still not included._

_Thanks to everyone who reviewed. As a new author I'm stumbling around trying to figure out what works and what doesn't, so feedback of any kind is appreciated._

_I put up a poll with the last chapter and forgot to mention it, and judging by the ten who noticed it people prefer fast updates to long chapters. The poll is still open if you want to weigh in._

_It seems like the readability of the last chapter suffered because of how much detail I try to cram in. I'm going to be more aware of that from now on. A lot of that was that I'd spent too much time thinking about who Kakashi would be in this story, and that spiraled off into other stuff. Some people enjoyed it, some people thought it was pointless. There's still a lot of explainy stuff that I think is essential to this chapter, but I've tried to make it easier to digest. Let me know if its better or worse than the last chapter in that sense. I've closed the last major inconsistencies that I felt the need to with this chapter, so things should pick up._

_The response to the Mito scene was interesting to say the least. The original draft had Mito and Kyuubi revealing too much just for the sake of revealing it, so I rewrote it more vaguely. And I may have overcompensated on that count. Reading the reviews that talked about what people were seeing, I was thinking 'why has no one picked up on the clues?' So I went and carefully reread it and realized I had removed too many of the clues to get across what I wanted to._

_Oops._

_So, it would be very surprising if anyone actually managed to make very many accurate guesses at all based on that teaser. There are some clues that I still think are obvious that no one's mentioned though. I thought about rewriting it or putting up a more informative version, as a kind of omake, but it doesn't ruin anything as it is so I'll leave it be unless there's massive demand for it or something. (Yes, that was me shamelessly asking for reviews.)_

_You may also notice that the way Kakashi thinks Kage Bunshin works is not the way it actually is working. That'll be explained._

* * *

**Team 7, Part II**

"See ya later," Naruto said as he leapt off the roof of his apartment building, heading towards the training ground that Kakashi-sensei had told them to meet at.

Had anyone actually been there, his farewell might have made sense. Unless they realized that he was actually talking to the plants.

Naruto liked to talk. So few people were willing to engage him in genuine conversation that he wholeheartedly enjoyed even the most frivolous of topics, so long as someone was actually talking to him. After countless thousands of hours of conversation between his Kage Bunshin, talking to himself even when there wasn't a clone to respond seemed natural.

Talking to the plants on his roof garden wasn't a sign of insanity. At least, he hoped it wasn't. It wasn't like he thought they were really listening to him. He'd read somewhere that plants actually grew better when they were played certain kinds of music, and pleasant (albeit one-sided) conversation couldn't be that far off, right? So he got to organize his thoughts, and the plants got the dubious benefit of hearing him speak.

It might be wishful thinking, but he did think the plants had gotten noticeably healthier since he'd begun meditating up there the week prior. Although it likely had more to do with the water condensation chakra exercises he'd taken to practicing there.

Calming his thoughts was the whole point of spending time on the roof.

A very important part of his training involved meditation to get better in tune with his chakra. He'd had some trouble with the whole concept until coming across a method that involved having a location to come to specifically to shut out the rest of the world, and routines to go along with that. Sometimes Naruto needed to have conversations with himself that weren't literally _with himself_ in order to stay sane, so the roof garden was a clone free zone.

He'd been up on the roof trying to regain his center since he'd jolted out of his 'sleep' at three in the morning. Plants may be great listeners, but their silence wasn't helping him come to terms with whatever had happened the night before.

The Kyuubi. The woman. The Uzumaki clan. None of it made any sense.

Three hours of trying to work through it and the only progress was thinking of something that may have been what the fox was talking about. There was only one thing that he could think of that the Kyuubi possibly could have felt. That first night after discovering the Fundamentals of Ninjutsu book he'd performed a reckless experiment with Kawarimi just for the heck of it. The backlash of trying to play tug of war with the space-time continuum had knocked him out and taken down every single active clone.

That would mean that it took a week for the Kyuubi to bring him to the seal, which did kind of make sense. The demon had mentioned that it would be 'easier' next time, so maybe whatever it had done to bring him there had been difficult enough to take a week. Even assuming that he was correct about that, Naruto was still left with a problem; there was no way in hell he was pulling a stunt like that again. He'd spent some time looking into the nitty-gritties of the Kawarimi, and what little he'd managed to learn about space-time techniques told him that he was lucky he hadn't blown himself up. Or turned himself into applesauce. Space-time manipulation could be weird that way. If that was what the Kyuubi wanted him to do, there was no way that Naruto could see it being a good thing. The fox probably thought it could use the stress on his chakra system to try and escape or something.

But as much as he didn't want to help the fox out, it had been about to tell him something about his clan. Naruto _needed_ to know what the Kyuubi had nearly said. He'd never thought too much about his clan name. All his life he'd been an orphan without a heritage, and there hadn't even been a hint that his clan had been important. Early on in his life he'd picked up the impression that no one even knew who his family was, and that Uzumaki was just a meaningless name given to him for bureaucratic reasons. That was standard procedure for children of unknown parentage who weren't adopted. But if the Kyuubi was to be believed his name _meant_ something. Something incredibly important, if even a freaking demon knew about it and could recognize it in his chakra.

If only that woman could have waited even five more seconds.

Aside from whatever the hell the Kyuubi knew about his clan that amused the demon to the point of actual laughter, where the hell had that woman come from? What was she even doing in the seal? Naruto wanted to feel grateful, he really did. If she really had stopped the Kyuubi from doing something dangerous, she deserved a hell of a lot more than his gratitude. But things just weren't adding up.

The thing that just kept niggling at him was how terrified the Kyuubi had gotten when she'd shown up. Something about the whole situation felt really off, and he couldn't put his finger on it. It was a moot point, because if he wanted to disregard her warnings about how dangerous it was for him to be in there with the demon, he didn't know how. And even if she was telling the truth he had no way to stop the Kyuubi from yanking him back in.

"Good, you're on time."

Naruto started slightly. He hadn't even realized that Sasuke and Sakura were already at the training field.

"Morning Sakura-chan. Sasuke." He included Sasuke grudgingly. Surprisingly, he even got a 'hn' in return rather than just being ignored. He couldn't help but stare at Sakura, but not for the usual reasons.

"What?" She asked defensively. There was something unnerving about the way he was looking at her. It was more considering than adoring.

"Nothing," Naruto said, averting his gaze. He didn't want to admit that he'd been trying to imagine her with red hair. He loved Sakura for who she was, not what she looked like! He'd be able to remember exactly what about her was so attractive when he wasn't so distracted. Why couldn't he get his mind off that damn woman? He couldn't help but bounce from intense suspicion to mooning adoration of her beauty and then back again every five minutes. "Hey, either of you have any weird dreams last night?"

"Weird dreams?" Sakura asked, taken aback by the question. "Not really."

"No," Sasuke answered, with a whole syllable more than Naruto expected from him.

"Hm," Naruto murmured as he fell back into thought. He didn't still think it had been a genjutsu, but he wasn't going to write off that idea completely. If nothing else, he was going redouble his genjutsu studies. He never wanted to feel that trapped in his head again.

* * *

"You're late!" Naruto and Sakura accused Kakashi in unison when he showed up in a swirl of leaves. "Again," Naruto added, peeved at what was looking to be a pattern.

"A black cat crossed my path, and I had to circle the village three times to shake off the bad luck," Kakashi replied, fooling no one.

"That's almost as lame as what Naruto said yesterday." Sakura turned her glare on the blond, and even Sasuke gave him the evil eye. They were clearly blaming him for Kakashi adding a ridiculously untrue excuse on top of being late.

So what if he gave their weirdo sensei the idea? One of Gai-sensei's rants that Naruto hadn't quite managed to tune out was about the youthfulness of punctuality, how a Youthful Shinobi should always be mindful of the area around them so that they didn't get lost on the road of life. For some reason that was all that had come to mind when he was scrambling for an explanation of why it took him five minutes to get from the classroom to the roof that didn't give away his trump card. And the fact that he'd ditched Sakura-chan.

It had seemed much more clever in his head.

Kakashi-sensei was clearly taunting him with this copycat routine, and he'd even managed to redirect some of Sakura-chan's anger from its rightful target onto Naruto! He wasn't the one who made Kakashi late, and that was clearly the issue here.

"That was way lamer," Naruto defended himself.

"If you say so," Kakashi said. He jingled something in his hands, grabbing the genins' attention. "Here are two bells. Your task is to take them off of me before this," he set down an alarm clock, "goes off. It's set for noon. Those who don't have a bell by noon don't get any lunch. Not only that, but you'll be tied to one of those stumps to watch me eat your lunch right in front of you."

_That bastard!_ _That's why he told us not to eat!_ Naruto realized as his stomach twisted in protest. He'd actually forgotten that Kakashi had told them not to, but he hadn't been in the mood to eat when he woke up. Now that it had been brought up he was suddenly quite hungry.

"There are only two bells, so one of you is definitely going to be tied to a stump. And the person who doesn't take a bell fails. So at least one of you will be sent back to the academy."

_What?!_

Naruto tensed, acutely aware of Sakura and Sasuke doing the same on either side of him. Any one of them was now potentially the enemy. That is, if the other two could actually get ahold of the bells.

Kakashi's single exposed eye managed to convey his amusement at their dismay. "You should use your kunai, shuriken, and whatever else you brought with you. You don't even have a chance of succeeding unless you come at me intending to kill."

"But you'll be in danger!"

Had Naruto not met Gai and Lee the week before, he very likely would have agreed with Sakura, although he wouldn't have mirrored her concern at the thought of Kakashi getting hurt. Mizuki had been surprisingly easy to overwhelm with clones, showing him that even experienced shinobi could be taken down by a near limitless army of fearless cannon fodder. A thousand clones had been ridiculous overkill for Mizuki. The chuunin had managed to dispel a grand total of two clones before going down. It likely would have been only marginally more difficult to defeat him with fifteen or twenty clones. The experience had left him with a rather overinflated ego. It seemed as though if one Naruto could give an opponent even the slightest bit of trouble, all he had to do was send more and more clones at them until they were overwhelmed or exhausted, whichever came first.

The truth of the matter was more complicated.

Yes, a swarm of disposable Narutos was something that a lot of shinobi just weren't equipped to deal with. Two days after the Mizuki incident, Iruka had admitted over a bowl of ramen that in anything even close to a straight up fight Naruto could take him out. He'd followed that up with a stern lecture on quality versus quantity, and a warning that in a hypothetical confrontation Iruka wouldn't fight him head on. Genjutsu had been stressed as a huge potential weak point. That had been followed up by another lecture about how the vast majority of missions the village undertook didn't end up in shinobi slugfests, and how important skills not directly related to combat were. It was good information, but boring to listen to. The fact that Iruka had been paying for his ramen helped him through it though.

Naruto liked and respected Iruka-sensei, but he'd thought his former teacher just couldn't fully appreciate the beauty of the 'throw a thousand Narutos at the enemy' plan. And then Lee had shown him the hard line between quality and quantity. Trying to overwhelm the enthusiastic genin with clones was about as effective as trying to cut down a tree with a plastic spoon.

What it all boiled down to was that Naruto didn't think that they'd even be able to scratch Kakashi, because they wouldn't even be able to scratch Lee if he was the one with the bells. Even if he wasn't allowed to fight back or hide. Something about the way the gray haired jounin held himself reminded Naruto of Gai-sensei, so he doubted Kakashi was a pushover.

"Oh, I'll be fine," Kakashi assured Sakura. "So are you three going to actually do anything? The clock's ticking."

The three of them leapt away from Kakashi and each other, all choosing to hide while they figured out what was going on. Kakashi didn't move a muscle. Apparently he wasn't going to pursue them or hide, which possibly made things easier.

The instant Naruto was sufficiently hidden he started creating clones. He didn't need to say anything to direct them, as they knew everything he needed from him. An interesting thing about Kage Bunshin was that they usually didn't require explicit coordination of their roles. If he wanted half of a batch to work on chakra control and the other half to do katas, the individual clones came into being _knowing_ which half they belonged to. He couldn't figure out how it worked, but it was really useful. Especially when having to talk to give out directions might give away his position.

Three clones went off to hide and think about the situation. Several dozen spread out for reconnaissance and in preparation for other tasks. He had a pretty good idea where Sakura-chan had hidden herself, but Sasuke had managed to slip off somewhere. Knowing where they were seemed like would be a good idea. Another few clones were sent off to the library. That was a long shot, but there was a book in particular that he thought might be helpful.

It was a dry read, but 'An Analysis of Battlefield Dynamics' had really opened his eyes to how a simplistic view of a situation made things difficult. As best as he could remember, this was what the book would characterize as a 'multi-party non-proxy competition for finite possession'. Which was just a stuffy way of saying that Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura all needed something, and there wasn't enough of that something to go around. Also, they were acting on their own behalf. For the most part, Konoha ninja acted as proxies for Konoha on behalf of clients, which sometimes did weird things to the strategic planning process.

Unfortunately, being able to give a fancy name to the situation didn't help when he couldn't remember any of the complicated analyses of strategies that went along with it, which was why he was having a clone try to figure out if there was anything helpful in there. A goal-oriented approach to the test would be hard without understanding Kakashi-sensei's motivations, but it was better than nothing.

There were other things to worry about, like the deceptive presentation of the victory conditions. Naruto could sit around trying to figure out whether or not having a bell at noon actually was the end goal, but he was better off leaving his clones to puzzle out all those confusing details, as noon wasn't that far off. The goal involved the bells, so actually going after them was probably a good idea. Knowing that his clones were thinking about the issues that were bugging him helped him clear his mind and focus on what he could achieve. Being able to delegate thinking was awesome.

"You're a really weird one, aren't you?" Kakashi said as Naruto simply walked back into clearing less than a minute after jumping away to hide.

"It's no fun playing hide and seek if no one is doing any seeking," Naruto replied, biting back the urge to point out that Kakashi was the weird one. That wasn't in line with his current tactics. "And besides, were you going to give me a bell if I hid until noon?"

"No, actually."

"That's what I thought. So, may I please have a bell?"

Kakashi stared at him. "You're… asking?"

Naruto smiled innocently. "If the first thing everyone did when they wanted something was try and take it by force, the world would be a horrible place, wouldn't it? There isn't any harm in being polite."

This strategy wouldn't have even occurred to him before reading 'Tactical Misconceptions: Goal-Oriented Strategic Thinking', which was an awesome book by the same author as 'An Analysis of Battlefield Dynamics', and the reason why he'd suffered through reading the much more difficult Dynamics book. Shimura Danzō knew what he was talking about, so even if he didn't grasp everything about battlefield dynamics he was sure there was something to it.

Although he didn't expect it to work, asking politely was technically a valid strategy. There wasn't any known reason why Kakashi would benefit from holding onto the bells, so he shouldn't have any reason to keep defend them. Other than the fact that it was a test, of course. But maybe it was test about out of the box thinking, and asking would work?

"Good point," Kakashi conceded, visibly amused. "No one's ever tried that before. But no, that's not good enough."

Naruto shrugged. "Worth a try. I'll give you a thousand ryo for it."

"Look kid, let me save you some time. You're going to have to take it from me."

The next part of his plan was something he wasn't really sure about, but even if it went bad he was sure he could recover.

Naruto steeled himself, and casually strolled up to Kakashi as nonthreateningly as possible. He reached out for the bell as he neared the jounin, who stepped back.

Kakashi was looking at him, unnerved. "When I said to take it from me, that wasn't what I meant."

"What, you want me to attack you? You better not be some weirdo masochist, because that's not something I want anything to do with."

Kakashi sighed in annoyance. "Do you _want_ to go back to the academy?"

"Not really."

"Then stop messing around and actually try already!"

"Are you sure?" Naruto asked dubiously.

"Yes!" Kakashi growled out in irritation. "Seriously, just–"

"Exploding Kunai of DOOM!" Naruto yelled out comically, making a throwing motion in Kakashi's direction, who dodged out of the way. Unnecessarily, as it turned out. A kunai with a paper tag trailing off the end of its handle had flown out of his sleeve, but somehow it got caught on the cuff of his jacket.

"Eh?" Naruto said, staring dumbly at the kunai and hissing tag hanging from his jacket. "AAAAAAAAAHHHH!" he screamed as he waved his arm around in a panicky fashion.

Kakashi was at his side in an instant, grabbing for the tag. _Gotcha!_ Naruto thought victoriously, twisting his body to hide his intent to go for the bells. The bells chimed as his fingers brushed against them, and then Naruto's side exploded in pain and he was sent spinning uncontrollably through the air.

Oddly enough, he'd had a lot of practice being in this kind of situation thanks to sparring with Lee, so it was relatively easy to deal with. He landed in a crouch on the side of a tree after a flight of about thirty feet, but allowed himself to fall to the ground rather than stick to it. He took slow, deep breathes as the pain in his side faded.

"Interesting trick," Kakashi commented, looking at the kunai embedded in a tree off to the side where he'd thrown it. The 'exploding' tag had gone off, catching fire rather unimpressively. "You're a seriously tricky little punk."

"That hurt," Naruto complained.

"Well, you shouldn't have startled me."

"Yeah, well… Exploding Kunai of SUPER DOOM!" Naruto launched another kunai in Kakashi direction, this one falling about ten feet short and sticking into the ground. It had a bundle of tags hanging off the end. Still pushing the counter-intuitive angle, Naruto charged at Kakashi, which meant he was headed straight for the tags. _Six, five…_

Kakashi jumped back a bit, although not enough to be safe if the were real exploding tags. "For your sake, those better–"

_Two, one!_ Naruto finished counting mentally, shutting his eyes tightly. There was a flash of light so powerful it burned even through his eyelids, and a sharp screeching sound. A split second later he felt the familiar tug of a Kage Bunshin using a kawarimi on him.

He'd conditioned himself to respond to it so well it was instinctive for him to assist the swap rather than resist it, to the point where it was a good deal easier for him to swap with himself than an inanimate object. A disorienting moment later and he was crouched somewhere away from the battlefield, a lookout clone's hand on his shoulder letting him know that he was safe.

"Dynamic Entry of DOOM!" he heard himself shout, a fair distance away by the sound of it. He was still seeing spots from his flash tag, so he couldn't look and see. He winced at the clone's battle cry. For one, shouting 'Dynamic Entry!' was not part of the plan. And the 'DOOM!' sounded really cool in the moment, but not so much from an outside perspective. He'd have to think on that later.

The clone that had switched with him was not blinded like himself or Kakashi, so Plan C had been to take advantage of the jounin's momentary blindness to make an attempt on the bells. Plan A had been asking for them, and Plan B had been tricking Kakashi into trying to save him from a really crappy explosive tag and grabbing them. He'd never expected asking for them would actually work, but he'd had moderate hopes for Plans B and C. Judging from the sounds of hand to hand combat, the slightly less crappy explosive tags (which he was calling 'flash tags') hadn't affected Kakashi nearly as much as they had Naruto.

It was inevitable that upon learning that the Sealing Arts had been responsible for defeating the Kyuubi that Naruto would want to learn them. If the Yondaime had a super badass Ninjutsu capable of taking down the demon, wouldn't he have used it? So Fuuinjutsu was potentially even more awesome than Ninjutsu. And with that, he'd hit a brick wall of sorts. There was a reason that every ninja and their grandmother weren't spamming awesome seals. After all even an idiot, if they were a meticulous idiot, could copy down a seal and power it, right? Turns out, not so.

Fuinjutsu was really hard.

Fuinjutsu was really, really, really, really, _really _RIDICULOUSLY HARD!

Most seals were extremely sensitive to just about everything. And by most, that was something along the lines of 98% of seals. They could be sensitive to a wide range of things, at both the time they were created and the time they were utilized, if those were different. The chakra and/or the mood of the sealer, the chakra of the user, the time of day, the season, the lunar cycle, the ambient chakra, the weather, the air pressure… all sorts of things might have to be taken into account. The way one person wrote a seal might be completely useless for another, or even the same person ten minutes later. Which was why Fuuinjutsu was an esoteric art and not another basic ninja skill. It was more art than science in a lot of ways.

The explosive tag and the sealing scroll were considered the absolute upper limits of 'casual' sealing (and 'casual' usually at least a year of serious study), mostly because they were fairly insensitive to environmental factors and typically needed very little personal customization in order to work. Although trying to make explosive tags when it wasn't cold, dry, and in the middle of the night was going past the 'casual' barrier, and any sealing scroll that wasn't made inside a sealing chamber probably wasn't going to be reliable. Sealing chambers were incredibly controlled environments designed to cut down on the factors that made seals more difficult. Most importantly, they were completely void of ambient chakra.

Shinobi who could _really_ use Fuuinjutsu on the battlefield were incredible, and Naruto wanted to be one. Of course, it had taken dozens of clone hours to even get the exploding tag to light on fire when activated, and hundreds to come up with the flash tag. He still couldn't make a proper explosion, but the fact that he was making fair progress on developing what he was hoping would be a 'flash bang' tag was incredibly exciting. It wasn't from a template or any theory he'd read about, but hundreds of hours of experimentation was giving him a sense for sealing that he felt was going somewhere incredibly useful.

Ok, his 'flash bang' was more of a 'flash screech' at the moment, but that was pretty cool too. Definitely way more useful than tags that just caught fire like overcomplicated matches. And he was looking forward to being able to produce his own explosive tags as well. On top of how awesome they were, if he could find someone who trusted his work they'd turn out to be a cash cow as well. The good tags were not cheap.

"Naruto, run away! You're going to get killed!" Sakura warned his clone. He was still seeing spots, but the ringing in his ears had subsided quickly.

Naruto heard Kakashi say something in an ominous tone. The jounin had been talking to his clone while they were fighting, but it was just some pointless stuff about teaching him a lesson in Taijutsu. He would take his weird caterpillar-human hybrid sensei over this weird lazy masochist pervert any day of the week.

"_Konohagakure Hiden Taijutsu Ōgi: Sennen Goroshi_!" the jounin intoned seriously.

One Thousand Years of Death? That sounded bad.

Naruto winced as the clone fighting Kakashi gave a horrified, pain-filled scream. Judging by the way the sound traveled, the clone was actually flying through the air. The scream was cut off by the sound of splashing water, and then the memories hit him.

"Oh, you fucking _bastard!_" Naruto hissed under his breath.

* * *

"That's a good look for you."

Antagonizing Sasuke wasn't going to help with getting his cooperation, but Naruto couldn't resist it at the sight of the Uchiha buried up to his neck in the ground. Oh, what he wouldn't give for a camera.

Sasuke ceased his ineffectual wriggling, flushing with indignation. "Like you're one to talk," he retorted. "At least he didn't stick his fingers up my ass."

Naruto winced at the reminder. "Yeah, on account of the fact that he'd have to get around the ten foot pole already shoved up there, I'm sure." He kneeled down next to the Sasuke and reached for him.

Sasuke snapped his head forward, trying to bite Naruto's hand.

"Hey, what the hell man! I'm trying to help you out of there!"

"Like I'm going to believe that."

"If you bite me, I'm going to roll up a newspaper and spend the rest of this test smacking you in the face with it," Naruto threatened. Well, he would leave a clone here to do that.

Sasuke turned his head to the side and went "Hmph", which Naruto took as agreement. He reached down carefully, placing his palm on the ground about a foot away from the other boy's head. Sasuke eyed him warily, but didn't attack.

Naruto let his chakra seep into the ground, keeping an eye on Sasuke's reaction. The boy didn't react, which meant that he either didn't sense it or was masking any reaction. It seemed more likely that he just hadn't noticed it. As jumpy and distrustful he was at the moment, Naruto would have expected another attempt at a bite.

It took about ten seconds to properly saturate the earth around Sasuke. The lingering traces of Kakashi's chakra had resisted his efforts in a manner that had to be intentional. The jounin had not wanted Sasuke getting out of there under his own power.

"What the…?" Sasuke mumbled as Naruto arm sank into the ground to grab his shirt.

"Grab my arm," Naruto instructed. Sasuke did so, with both hands. It was probably only about four or five times harder than moving through water at this point. Naruto hadn't put as much effort into this particular kind of elemental binding as he had water or wind, but secondary resonation with earth was far easier than other material elements, and reducing viscosity was the easiest thing to do with it.

From there it was a simple matter to lift Sasuke out of the earth.

"What was that?" Sasuke asked.

His tone was questioning rather than demanding, so Naruto took it as the closest thing to a 'thank you' as he was going to get. His first instinct was to deflect the question with a flippant remark, but it wasn't like he was giving away the secret workings of his personal jutsu by answering. It was a fairly basic application of chakra, and now was a good time to extend an olive branch.

"Secondary resonation of chakra to affect the earth," Naruto explained. He continued at Sasuke's blank look. "It's probably one of the bases for whatever Kakashi-sensei used to put you there in the first place, except like a hundred times weaker. Judging by how quickly and discreetly he was tunneling, his technique probably localizes the effective area somehow, which means there would have to be some kind of second or third level property alteration to actually move…" he trailed off as he noticed Sasuke staring at him, bug-eyed. "What?"

"You actually sound like you know what you're talking about. That is so weird." Sasuke muttered the last part, not quite under his breath. "Whatever. I don't have time for this right now. Since you're not as useless as you used to be, you can help." His eyes flicked to Sakura's unconscious form when he said 'useless'.

"We should wake up Sakura-chan first," Naruto said, pleased that Sasuke was agreeable to teaming up.

Sasuke sighed in exasperation. "Two bells, three of us. I'm not giving up my chance to become a genin for her sake. Are you?"

"Yes. Well, no." Naruto corrected himself at Sasuke's incredulous look. "This test isn't about getting the bells. Don't you think this whole setup is crazy weird?"

"A bit," Sasuke admitted reluctantly. "But that doesn't matter once I have a bell."

"You're not getting a bell unless he hands it over. None of us are. Let me wake Sakura so I don't have to explain myself twice."

"Whatever," Sasuke grumbled, clearly not happy with the idea. But he was sticking around, so that was something.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto said, gently shaking her. "Sakura-"

"Kyah!" Sakura took a wild swing at Naruto, who easily dodged out of the way. "Save me Sasuke-kun! Oh no! Sasuke-kun!" She looked ready to collapse in tears as she remembered seeing Sasuke 'dead'. And then she caught sight of him leaning against a tree, very much alive.

"She's awake. Now tell me what you think the test is about," Sasuke demanded.

"You're alive!" Sakura exclaimed happily, rushing at him.

"We don't have time for this," he snapped at her, stopping her in her tracks as she took note of anger in his voice. "Get on with it already Naruto." Sakura looked back and forth between the boys in confusion.

Naruto realized that he didn't have much time before Sasuke lost what little patience he had with the situation. "Right. So the test isn't about the bells. It should be clear by now that none of us has the slightest chance of taking the bells off him unless he lets us. Also, the victory conditions don't make any sense."

"How so?"

"Ok, let's say that you two each gets a bell. What happens then?"

"You go back to the academy. We become genin."

"Remember that he said since there were two bells at least one of us gets tied up at lunch? If the test is over and I'm going back to the academy, what's the point of humiliating me on top of that?"

"To be mean?" Sakura volunteered after some thought.

"Could be," Naruto admitted. "But I think it's a trick, meant to goad us into forgetting what he said yesterday. Taking the test at face value, the optimal strategy would be for two of us to team up and subdue the other one, or trick them into helping us get the bells and then betray them. Otherwise the odd man out would interfere with those that teamed up. With a 66% failure rate, that would mean half the teams that took this test managed to pull that off. But let's say this really is a test of skill, and that if I'm good enough or have a good enough strategy, Kakashi will let me 'win' a bell off of him. If the test doesn't end for me when I get the bell that means I have to protect the bell until noon. Who are you going to try and get a bell from? Me or him?"

"You, obviously," Sasuke said, nodding along.

"Right, so for the rest of the test, whichever one of us is holding onto the bell at any given moment is a much better target than he is. We'd never go after the one that Kakashi still had, and whoever was holding the bell at the end of the test would be the one to pass. Also a 66% failure rate. But both of those approaches ignore the most important thing he's said about the test."

"And what's that?" Sasuke asked.

"Yesterday he said that graduating the academy showed we might have the skills to be shinobi, but this was about proving that we were worthy of being Konoha shinobi. All the optimal strategies involve us thinking about each other as enemies. How can we prove that we're worthy of being _Konoha_ shinobi if we're betraying each other at every turn?"

Naruto's eyes steeled, his resolute tone relaying that he was absolutely serious. "The test isn't about who's the most skilled. It's about sacrifice. Can we work together for the good of Konoha, even when it means putting aside our own goals?"

Sasuke was frowning at him. It seemed as though he got what Naruto was saying, but didn't quite agree with it. Sakura was looking at him oddly, in a way he couldn't quite figure out. It was like she was… afraid? No, that couldn't be it.

"That could be," Sasuke said, as he took it in. "But what if you're wrong. What if it is about the bells?"

The clones he'd sent off to think and read had popped, and it was a combination of thinking about everything Kakashi had said and rereading 'An Analysis of Battlefield Dynamics' that had resulted in his epiphany. He'd been trying to find an optimum strategy for three separate parties fighting over something a fourth possessed, but none of the 'good' strategies had made any sense. What he was 'supposed' to do was to team up with Sasuke, and to trick Sakura into thinking she was teamed up with Sasuke before betraying her. It went against everything he believed in. He wouldn't even do that to Sasuke, let alone Sakura.

He'd refused to believe that he'd have to be like Mizuki in order to prove himself worthy of being a Konoha shinobi. That's when he made the connection to a common theme in both the 'An Analysis of Battlefield Dynamics' and 'Tactical Misconceptions'. Every time the books talked about shinobi acting for their own personal interests, it was in the context of that shinobi being someone other than the reader. It always assumed that the reader was a Konoha shinobi, acting on behalf of Konoha, which was part of why he'd had such a hard time working out a strategy for personal gain from those principles.

All the odd things that Kakashi was saying were all what Shimura referred to as collaboration disruptors. If you knew that there were multiple parties that could work against you, it was in your best interests to pit them against each other, make them think that the other getting ahead was them getting left behind. Also, it was important to recognize when that kind of tactic was being used on you.

Naruto hadn't realized it at first because Kakashi had, at least initially, done a masterful job of masking it. From the very beginning they knew that they were competing for the bells with each other. Everything was geared for them to work against each other the instant it looked like one or two of them were about to get the bells. They went into the test as individuals, not a team.

But Kakashi put in too many disruptors. The fact that there were two bells was more than enough to completely trip them up. Threats to tie them up, keeping the test going so that they could theoretically take the bells from each others, and implications that even though two of them could possibly pass only _one_ of them was statistically likely to were all unnecessary. The overkill had to be intentional. They were meant to notice his heavy-handed approach to keeping them apart. Nothing else made sense.

The idea of sacrifice was something he'd been struggling with every since the night he'd learned that he was a Jinchuuriki. He'd found out what the official term for what he was rather quickly when he got the idea that he might not be unique in his situation.

The power of human sacrifice.

That's what he was. A sacrifice. The Yondaime had sacrificed himself and Naruto for the good of Konoha. He couldn't even be angry at the deceased Hokage, because what was the alternative? If he hadn't sealed the Kyuubi into Naruto, they all would have died. He hadn't chosen to be a Jinchuuriki, but all things considered it didn't really bother him that much. What did bother him was the idea of becoming the Hokage.

He still wanted to, so much that it almost hurt. If anything, he had even more respect for the position now that he was beginning to understand what a burden it must be. The Hokage sacrificed everything for Konoha. All the Hokages had dedicated every part of their lives to the benefit of Konoha. He'd once thought of the Yondaime as the greatest of the Hokages, but now he had to admit that he respected the Sandaime more. It had nothing to with the sealing or their relative skills––although the history he was reading suggested that Sarutobi had been a monster in his prime––but the sheer amount of time he'd served as Hokage was incredible. To bear the weight of Konoha for so long, taking up the mantle again after the death of his successor… it was humbling. And terrifying.

Naruto wanted to love the village so much that he'd give everything to it the way the Sandaime had, but it just wasn't there yet. He wasn't even sure he was capable of it, not after learning why it had held him at arms length his whole life. And even if he could overcome his doubts on that count, that would mean putting his clan second. The revelation that he might have a meaningful history to uncover was also something to consider. Could he really prioritize Konoha over his clan?

He wanted to be the Hokage, but what that would mean scared him. And he knew that he would have to come to terms with his conflicting feelings for the village before he could figure out whether or not that was something he could really commit to.

Just because he wasn't ready to prioritize Konoha before everything else in his life didn't mean it wasn't important to him. He didn't know how much of himself belonged to Konoha, but he knew it was a good deal more than nothing.

"If I'm wrong, it's on me," Naruto told Sasuke and Sakura. "You two get the bells. If this test is about choosing to throw one of us away, I don't want to pass. I really don't think I'm wrong though."

He saw it the instant that Sasuke decided to back him in the other boy's eyes, but it didn't feel like victory. Sasuke had been prepared to team up with him and leave Sakura to fail when he'd realized that Naruto might actually be able to contribute. There had been some small amount of acknowledgement, and maybe even respect building in the way that Sasuke had been looking at him when he had been explaining his thoughts on the test. The moment he decided Naruto was being honest clinched his cooperation, but also swept away the respect as if it never been there. There was a glint in the boy's look that clearly said _you're an idiot._

It hurt to have that acknowledgment, from Sasuke of all people, and to throw it away. It wasn't even technically on principle. Putting aside his personal goals for Konoha's benefit was one thing, but he didn't need to for Sasuke's. Or even Sakura's for that matter.

But this was the right way to go. He could feel it.

_Trust your instincts._

Naruto shoved his fear away with sheer determination. "So?"

* * *

Kakashi watched Sasuke come to a decision from where he was hiding in a tree directly above the three. It was interesting that the boy had stuck around to hear Naruto's proposal at all, and astonishing that he might actually go along with it.

"Ok, but what are we going to do?" Sasuke asked. "Like you said, even if the three of us go at him at the same time it's not going to make a difference."

Naruto hid his relief at Sasuke's answer, but not well enough to keep it from Kakashi. "I've still got my best cards to play. Ooh, cards! Now that's an idea. Anyways, here's the plan."

The jounin slipped away, leaving a shadow clone to eavesdrop. It wouldn't dispel until after they'd tried whatever they were going to do, so Kakashi could get both the perspective of seeing what they did without bias and also see how well they came up with and executed a plan. Not that it mattered for the purposes of the 'test'.

The test was really a lesson. There was designed to pit them against each other, and looking at the rules there was no way to conclude 'teamwork'. They would all make individual attempts at the bells, fail miserably, and then he could swoop in and give an amazing speech about the benefits of teamwork. And then he could just use whatever flimsy instance of anything even _resembling_ teamwork as an excuse to pass them.

It had been a cross between amusing and amazing to hear Naruto grab onto every single inconsistency and try to link them into a grand conspiracy. A ninja should look underneath the underneath, but looking underneath the underneath the underneath the couch was just plain paranoid.

Oddly enough Naruto had come astoundingly close to the point he was trying to make. And then he'd swerved off into a conclusion that had seriously ruined Kakashi's good mood.

Sacrifice? Seriously?

The worst part of it was that it made sense. There was no part of Naruto's analysis that he could point to and say _no, see this? It really means teamwork!_ It was all just a bunch of nonsense to tack the moral of the story––teamwork––onto, but he couldn't really say that to their faces. Naruto had essentially hijacked his point, adding on that sometimes teamwork meant taking one for the team. Which wasn't untrue, but that wasn't what he was trying to get across here!

Oh, that boy was going to be trouble.

By all accounts, Naruto should have been doing the least thinking in the group. Instead, he thought every detail to death and came up with surprisingly good plans. If this had really been a test of their ability to accomplish a goal, retrieving the bells, Naruto would be scoring the best by far.

He hadn't wasted any time trying to take on Kakashi directly, correctly assuming that the jounin was far out of his league. Playing up his 'idiotic class clown' image, he was able to leverage the very reasonable assumption that his sensei wasn't about to let him blow himself up.

Kakashi had panicked. It had been entirely believable that Naruto's ill-thought-out surprise attack had gone horribly wrong, and he'd been about to lose an arm and maybe his life for his stupidity. The sound of Naruto actually touching the bells had snapped him out of his tunnel vision, and he reflexively knocked the boy away with an unnecessarily hard palm to the sternum. The 'explosive tag' simply catching fire where he'd thrown it had highlighted that the whole thing had been planned. It had worked better than it any right to, mostly because of Kakashi's personal stake in keeping Naruto alive. If it had been Sasuke or Sakura attempting that, he'd have caught on the instant they started reaching for the bells rather than actually being startled.

Not that the comedic idiot routine would have been believable coming from them.

The trick with the next set of tags had really been something though. The boy had given no indication that it had been coming, not even an anticipatory flinch or blink to give away the coming explosion of light. There was no way that Naruto hadn't been blinded just as thoroughly as Kakashi had been. In fact, he'd been closer to the tags, so it had to have been worse for him. But he'd carried on as if it hadn't happened, attacking with surprisingly proficient Iron Fist.

Even blinded and surprised, Kakashi had no trouble fending off the kid's assault. It had been a brilliant move, designed to close the gap in their skills for a few short moments. It just hadn't been enough against someone trained to fight in pitch dark.

It had been relatively simple to work out that Kage Bunshin had been involved with Naruto seemingly brushing off the effects of his own surprise tactic. Most likely he'd been engaging the real Naruto at first. He'd hit Naruto with considerable force when knocking him away, and he doubted that the boy had enough experience with clones to have one withstand a sudden hit like that without dispelling. The switch had been timed flawlessly, and the fact that the clone could attack without pause right after using Kawarimi was nothing short of impressive.

Kakashi had been expecting Naruto's strategy to consist of making as many clones as he could and trying to dog pile him. Fifteen or twenty clones would have been enough to take down a chuunin like Mizuki, who wasn't even much of a combatant, but the jounin had been looking forward to showing the boy that he wasn't going to be able to coast through life by bulldozing over every enemy with a bunch of clones. Instead, he'd actually been acting like a real ninja and had done of passable job of hiding the fact that he even knew the advanced clone technique.

In comparison, Sasuke and Sakura were rather disappointing.

Sasuke had performed more or less as expected. Aside from his opening surprise assault with kunai and shuriken, he'd relied on his skills in a direct confrontation. His skill with the Uchiha's signature Intercepting Fist was greater than Naruto's Iron Fist, but pitting them against each would most likely end in the Uzumaki's victory, even if they were just restricted to hand to hand combat. The Intercepting Fist was built around the Sharingan's ability to predict movement, so using without the bloodline limit active was a dumber move than he'd expected from a supposed genius.

His use of the Gokakyu was so thoughtless that it was actually insulting. Did Sasuke really think that Kakashi was going to stand still and be barbecued? The boy hadn't been using it as a distraction, or as the first step in more complicated tactic. He'd waited for the smoke to clear and had been genuinely surprised not to see a charred corpse as the result of his attack. Kakashi had to admit the size and intensity of the fireball had been impressive… for an academy student. Wasting fifteen percent of his chakra on a jutsu that he should have realized had no chance of actually hitting and then waiting to see if it had worked? Not so impressive. All in all there wasn't anything to be impressed about there.

Last and certainly least, Sakura had surprised him, and not in a good way. He'd thought there was a slight chance she'd pick up on the Genjutsu, but his plan involved her trying to help the fake Sasuke before having the illusion slip away to show her how outclassed she was. Instead she fainted. And then she fainted again when she woke up to the sight Sasuke buried in the ground.

Kakashi had thought he'd avoided this kind of annoyance when Kurenai had insisted on having the Hyuuga girl on her team. Not that he'd expected anyone would put Hinata on the same team as Sasuke or Naruto, let alone a team with both. Of course, some nut had given this team the green light, so maybe it had been considered.

Kakashi set aside his thoughts on the matter as Naruto walked back into the clearing, a seeming repeat his last attempt.

"Back for more?" Kakashi asked, putting his Icha Icha away. He'd didn't expect that anything the boy had cooked would end up damaging his precious, but better safe than sorry. The brat could be quite surprising when he put his mind to it. "I've never met anyone who wanted a second helping of Sennen Goroshi, but I won't judge."

Naruto flushed with anger at the reminder. "You're going to pay for that," he promised, his tone brimming with loathing.

Kakashi was a bit startled by the boy's vehemence. He knew that he'd used the technique on a clone, and he very much doubted that Naruto had learned about the memory transfer capabilities of Kage Bunshin yet. Even if he had, why would a clone decide to send that experience back to its creator when it dispelled?

Maybe it had really embarrassed Naruto, in which case Kakashi was regretting using it. The boy had a much poorer image of Kakashi than he'd intended, and picking on him too much was just going to make it worse.

Naruto assumed an interesting position. His hands were in the positioned as though to form a tiger seal, but separated vertically by a few feet. His right hand was held at his sternum, with his left arm extended vertically above his head.

_Kirigakure no Jutsu?_ _But he's not anywhere near the water._ That particular stance was very esoteric, usually seen with a rare set of Kiri's signature jutsu. The only one he knew that required only one seal was the hiding in the mist technique.

Then Naruto began bleeding a ridiculous amount of chakra, and the wind began to pick up around them, along with a curious rustling sound.

"_Uzumaki Hijutsu: Konohagakure no Jutsu!_" Naruto proclaimed proudly. The rustling revealed itself to be hundreds of leaves, floating and swirling around them. Hundreds became thousands, and in less than ten seconds Kakashi couldn't see more than three feet in front of his face.

_Hiding in the leaves… how apt._

Kakashi was impressed. When Naruto had mentioned inventing jutsu the day before he assumed that the boy had discovered trivial alteration, and like hundreds of genin before him thought himself amazing because he could make his fireballs more explodey. Or something similarly inane.

But this was not trivial.

Konohagakure no Jutsu had to have been designed specifically for Naruto, or someone with very similar reserves. The chakra cost was far too high for anyone else. The technique saturated the air around them with chakra to the point where Kakashi's chakra sense was completely smothered. The sound of thousands of leaves scraping against each and the wind that carried them kept him from hearing anything else. His sense of smell was also useless due to the leaves and the wind.

Kakashi was really regretting that his Sharingan hadn't been exposed, as he was itching to analyze the technique further. Kirigakure no Jutsu wasn't a cheap jutsu when it came to chakra, but it didn't have to be continuously powered. There was no way this technique was fire and forget like the mist version.

Unless Naruto was pumping in a hundred times more chakra than the technique needed to consume, there was no way Kakashi would be able to keep it up for long even if he did manage to copy it. Even if he was, saturating the air with chakra was one of the advantages of this version over the mist one. Naruto had managed to seal off every single sense that mattered.

This wasn't like the tricks that Naruto had tried to pull with the tags, useful only when he had the element of surprise. It was genuinely setting off Kakashi's danger sense. The smart thing to do would be to get out the effective area of the technique, but that would defeat the purpose of the test. Not to mention that would mean conceding that Naruto actually posed a threat to him, no matter how minimal.

No, he could deal with this.

Kakashi moved away from his original position. He wasn't going to underestimate Naruto by thinking that the boy hadn't given his teammates some way to find him in the leaves, but there was no reason to make it easy for them.

As soon as he began moving the bells started chiming. The wind and the leaves were actually _targeting_ them.

_Interesting_, Kakashi thought to himself. It would be easy enough to hide the bells away, but that would just be mean of him.

There was suddenly a strong sense that something was coming at him from his right, which he ignored in favor of blocking a grab for the bells from the other direction. Sasuke engaged him briefly before jumping back out of sight. He could sense the Uchiha until he got about fifteen feet away, and then Naruto's fog-like presence hid the other boy's.

_That must be Sakura's contribution,_ Kakashi thought as he dispelled the genjutsu that was now trying to make him believe that someone was about to attack him from behind. His danger sense was far more refined so it didn't trick him for even a moment, but it had been a good attempt.

The jounin frowned as the genjutsu now screamed that he was about to be attacked from all sides. It hadn't been reapplied. He'd dispelled it, and it had simply still been there.

_That can't be right_…

He jumped away from a brace of shuriken, dispelling the genjutsu again.

_That's not Sakura_, Kakashi realized as he once again sensed danger from the side but Sasuke's chakra closing in from behind. Someone was repeatedly layering the crude genjutsu on him over and over again, and Sakura certainly wouldn't have the knowhow or the chakra for that.

It had to be Naruto again, but even that didn't quite make sense. Yes, this genjutsu was something he'd be able to learn. It was relatively blunt, and responded to being overpowered by simply being unsubtle rather than failing. But layering genjutsu was a highly advanced skill, one that he was positive the blond wasn't capable of.

_Unless…_

* * *

"_Uzumaki Hijutsu: Konohagakure no Jutsu!_"

It wasn't necessary to actually announce the technique, but Naruto thought it was much cooler this way. He even managed not to say something about 'DOOM!' this time. _Hiding in the leaves of doom_ didn't exactly make sense for the skill.

Maybe if he made the leaves explode? That was something to think on.

Konohagakure no Jutsu was his first original jutsu, and while he had been hoping for a more impressive time to reveal it, this would have to do. It had come a long way from its roots as a secondary resonation chakra exercise.

It had taken only two days to complete the exercise with the help of his Kage Bunshin. But he'd seen no reason to stop there, and had continued trying to increase the number of leaves he could control independently. The difficulty of adding a single leaf increased to the point where it seemed impossible to control any more, but he'd made a breakthrough in realizing that he didn't need to direct each leaf at all times. Large groups of leaves could be moved in the same manner, so that changed how he approached it.

Realizing that he'd fundamentally changed the controlling mechanism of the technique, he'd experimented with different hand seals. He'd found that the projection traits of the tiger seal worked better than the concentration aspect of ram, and going along that line of thought had used a variant of the tiger seal that was less concentrated. The farther apart his hands were, the better his chakra was emitted and spread over the area. He'd ended up holding half the seal straight up and the other at chest level.

Dropping his right hand any further actually made it much harder to diffuse his chakra horizontally, so he'd settled on that variation. He'd managed to find it in his reference encyclopedia of hand seals when he'd looked it up to get a better idea of how it might work. One of the jutsu listed as using the obscure seal, Kirigakure no Jutsu, had given him the idea of how to develop it further.

Naruto had never tested this jutsu with other people before, and he was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to sense where everyone was in the technique.

Konohagakure no Jutsu bled chakra all over the place. Some things resisted absorbing that chakra better than others. Kakashi, Sasuke, and Sakura's positions were obvious to him by how strongly their chakra pushed back against his own. He'd expected to be able to sense them on some level, but this was far better than he'd been hoping for.

He felt Kakashi move. Thankfully, the jounin wasn't trying to get out of the area.

Directing his jutsu around where the bells should be rewarded Naruto with a chiming sound as they bounced around.

Naruto felt one of his clones vie for primary control of the Konohagakure no Jutsu, and ceded his own hold on it as he jumped away from his original position. He didn't want to be easy to find if Kakashi wanted to attack him to disrupt the jutsu.

Collaborative jutsu was something he'd found to be particularly suited to his skill set. With Kage Bunshin, he could bypass a lot of the really annoying difficulties. Synchronizing was trivial when you had the exact same understanding and chakra as your partner. That meant that his clones could tap into the technique and manipulate it or sense through it fairly easily.

It was the same with layering genjutsu. And theoretically parallel genjutsu as well, which he hadn't managed to pull off yet.

The list of illusions he could reliably use was very, very short. _Imminent Danger_ was the whole list at this point, essentially. Using several Kage Bunshin, he could leverage his poor genjutsu to their full potential.

Kakashi easily fought off Sasuke and dispelled the genjutsu. That was fine. He hadn't expected to actually deceive the jounin with his illusion. It was just supposed to be an annoyance, especially with the five clones all piling on the same illusion.

True layering involved being able to do this without clones, but there was no reason not to use them. If it took three seconds to apply the jutsu and one second for Kakashi to dispel each instance, as long as he had more than three clones going at it he'd be able to force Kakashi to be continuously dispelling genjutsu.

Well, that was the plan. His genjutsu clones dispelling put an end to that idea.

Once Kakashi had figured out that he was being affected by multiple genjutsu, he'd been able to tear through all five of them in less than a second. The clones had reapplied the genjutsu, but they'd all been dispelled simultaneously the second time around. And when they'd tried to go again for the third time, the genjutsu simply hadn't taken. A few more tries at that, and the clones had decided that it was a lost cause and dispelled to let the Boss know what was going on.

Kakashi-sensei was a weird jerk, but he was still skilled as hell. Start to finish, he'd completely overcome Naruto's attempts to use genjutsu in less than ten seconds, while fighting off Sasuke at the same time. It was pretty discouraging, actually.

Having only one real genjutsu had probably made it much easier to deal with, but now wasn't the time to sulk about it. Naruto created a Kage Bunshin to brood about the issue and put it out of his mind.

"What the hell?" Naruto vented aloud as Sasuke launched another fireball at their teacher.

That wasn't part of the plan. Especially as it drove the jounin away from where they were trying to direct him.

_I guess it was too much to hope that he'd follow the game plan all the way through, _Naruto thought to himself. He created a dozen clones with the intention of herding Kakashi towards Sakura-chan.

He'd had a hard time working Sakura-chan into his plan. There was nothing she could do that he couldn't just use a clone for. In the end he was just banking on Kakashi thinking that he'd teamed up with Sasuke with the agreement that they'd split the bells between them.

It made sense. If he had pick one of them to team up with based solely on skills, it would have to be Sasuke. So hopefully Kakashi wouldn't be expecting Sakura to make a bid for the bells. It also helped Sasuke accept the plan, as it was obvious which one of the boys she'd give a bell to if she managed to get her hands on them.

BBBRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGG!

"What?" Naruto said dumbly.

_It's too soon!_

"Lunch time!" Kakashi called out cheerfully, tossing Sasuke away from him. "You can drop the jutsu now, blondy."

_It's a trick, right? It has to be a trick?_

One of his Kage Bunshin helpfully vocalized his thoughts so he didn't have to give away his position. "We should have another half hour at least!"

"Well, I thought I'd be nice to finish up early for some food. You three didn't get to eat breakfast after all."

_No… just no. It can't be over._

When he thought back on it, Naruto wouldn't remember making a decision to do anything. All he would remember was an empty feeling, and _moving_.

It wasn't something that was combat ready, not by a long shot, but he'd experimenting with using chakra to increase how fast he could move. Coordinating the reinforcement of his muscles, reinforcement the ground he was trying to push off of, and the expulsion of chakra he was boosting himself wasn't something he was even close to being able to pull off.

In that moment it was effortless. He was a hundred feet away from Kakashi, and in an instant he was right behind him.

Time had slowed to a crawl. The leaves swirling around were barely moving at all in his perception, his fist pushing them aside as it made its way inexorably towards the back of Kakashi's head.

Going for the bells didn't even occur to him. All the mattered was hitting the smug bastard. And he was going to do it.

_Huh?_

Kakashi wasn't there. It was as if he'd blinked and the silver-haired jounin had slipped away in that split second.

But he hadn't blinked.

There'd been no indication of movement, no afterimage.

And then Naruto was slammed facedown into the ground.

_Fuck!_

Naruto struggled as best he could, which was pretty much not at all. Kakashi was crouched down next to him, their only point of contact the jounin's hand gripping the back of his neck.

The index and middle fingers were directly on his spine. The others were pinching his neck, apparently on nerves or something because it was downright painful and he couldn't move at all. His entire body was stiff as a board.

As if that wasn't enough, the fingers on his spine were injecting chakra and it _burned_. The purpose of that became obvious as all his active jutsu dispelled. Every single clone popped, and his Konohagakure no Jutsu lost cohesion, all the leaves floating to the ground.

"Now that was just rude," Kakashi chided.

"Hng!" Naruto groaned. He tried to make Kage Bunshin without seals, but even that wasn't possible.

_You fucking idiot!_ Naruto berated himself. He'd lost his damn cool, and thrown his real body into jeopardy. He'd felt so condescendingly superior when Sasuke had been coughing fireballs uselessly at the jounin. There was no way _he'd_ be that stupid.

But he had.

His anger drained away, and all that was left was a profound sense of shame. He'd spent _thousands_ of clone hours devising ways to never have his real body in actual danger. He wasn't under the illusion that his plans were infallible. Every tactic was supposed to be flexible to account for oversights.

This wasn't an oversight. It wasn't poor planning. It was pure idiocy.

The memories of the clones who'd been on watch to switch with his real body in the event of unexpected danger were telling.

In some respects it was awe-inspiring, but overall it was a monumental failure. He'd surpassed himself, moving so fast that his clones hadn't even been able to track his movement. As far as they were concerned he'd been slammed into the ground the same instant that the ground at his original position exploded from the force of his launch. And then they'd been forcibly dispelled before they could even think of helping him out.

"Well, you three weren't as terrible as you could have been," Kakashi said, releasing his vice-like grip on Naruto's neck and walking away from his prone body. "A few more years in the Academy and you might even be ready to face the real world. However, I'm in a pretty good mood, and I feel like doing you all a favor."

Naruto's focus snapped to the jounin. He'd been stretching to try and loosen his muscles. His entire body ached, and he wasn't sure if it was his boost technique, Kakashi's nerve-pinchy hold, or the combination of the two. Most likely the combination.

Sasuke's glare moved from Naruto to the jounin as well. He'd been glaring at the blond like it was his fault Kakashi had ended things early.

Sakura had a look that suggested that she daren't hope for good news, but was hoping for it anyways.

Kakashi removed a bell from where it was hanging, and tossed it to Naruto. The blond caught it automatically, the chiming sound sending shivers down his spine.

_What?_

"Blondie impressed me the most, and this way you two don't have to have your vision damaged by excessive orange." The jounin was doing that peculiar eye-smiling thing. "Everybody wins. Yay!"

_What?_

Naruto was ecstatic.

Naruto was terrified.

Naruto was fucking confused!

_What?_

Sakura was looking at him uncomprehendingly. It hadn't sunk in for her. Sasuke was looking at him with murder in his dark eyes. And Kakashi was looking at him as though he were waiting for something.

_What does he want?_ Naruto wondered. _A thank you?_

Kakashi admitting that Naruto had impressed him caught the blond off guard, especially with how hard the bastard had been on him from the start. He wanted bask in the praise, but the damn jounin had put him between a rock and a fire breathing Uchiha.

_Who are you going to try and get a bell from? Me or him?_

And suddenly Naruto realized that Kakashi had been there. He'd been listening.

_If I'm wrong, it's on me._

That's what this was about. That's what this had to be about.

_Trust your instincts._

"If I take this, I'm not worthy of being a Konoha shinobi," Naruto said, watching closely for any reaction from Kakashi, any hint of whether or not he was on the right track.

There was nothing. The jounin just calmly met his gaze with his single exposed eye.

_There's no turning back._

He knew what he had to do. And he knew how to make Sakura and Sasuke do it too.

Naruto tossed the bell to Sakura, who almost fumbled catching it in surprise. She looked between the two boys, flinching as she met Sasuke's hard stare.

"I, uh, well," Sakura tried to speak. "I didn't really do anything, so I don't deserve to pass. It should be Sasuke-kun or Naruto, and if Naruto doesn't want it, then, uh…"

Sakura tossed it to Sasuke rather than try to figure out what more to say. He snatched it out of the air, glaring at Naruto. His knuckles were white with how tightly he clutching the bell, and Naruto wouldn't be surprised if the metal was warping.

"I don't need or want your _charity_," he spat out, addressing Naruto instead of the girl who'd given him the bell. He flung the bell at ground in front of Kakashi's feet.

"Well, that's seriously odd," Kakashi mused. "I was under the impression all of you wanted to shinobi. I hate to disappoint, but if you all want to go back to the Academy together… too bad. You all pass."

* * *

"…and then he showed us the Memorial Stone," Naruto concluded, having just finished relaying his day to the Sandaime Hokage.

"It sounds like you've had an interesting day," the Sandaime commented, leisurely smoking his pipe.

"Interesting isn't quite the word I'd use," Naruto grumbled. "Hey, is there any chance I could take another look at the Forbidden Scroll?"

Sarutobi raised an eyebrow. "Has forbidden taken on a different meaning while I wasn't looking?"

"Maybe?" Naruto tried. "Nah, I just want to look over Kage Bunshin more carefully. I wasn't smart enough to pay attention to the details when I learned it. Although it would be super awesome to check out some of the other stuff. I was too focused on learning Kage Bunshin to really look at anything else."

Sarutobi chuckled. "Well, I suppose it wouldn't be so terrible to let you read up on the Kage Bunshin––only the Kage Bunshin, mind you. It will have to be another day though, as the scroll is safely locked away due to a recent attempt to steal it."

Naruto had the good grace to blush at that. "Ehehe, sorry about that."

"Is there anything in particular you wanted know about?"

"Yeah. I mean, I want to know everything about it, but right now I really want to know how the memory transfer stuff works, and how much I can mess with that." Having to experience Sennen Goroshi secondhand was a big factor, but this was something he'd been wondering about even before that horrific experience.

"Unfortunately, the scroll doesn't have much to say on the issue. Never before has anyone used the technique so prolifically, and many aspects simply haven't been discovered or ironed out. If this is something that you think is important, I recommend speaking to the Yamanaka clan on the matter after you've figured out what you can on your own."

"Yamanaka? You're saying _Ino_ can help me?" Naruto asked, disbelieving. That seemed impossible.

"Not her specifically, but her clan knows more about the mind and memories than anyone else in the village, perhaps even in the Elemental Nations. Your best bet would be her father, the clan head, but he's a very busy man. You might have to put in a mission request if you intend to take up a lot of his time."

"A mission request?"

"It's common to pay for another ninja's expertise in these matters. Training, help with jutsu, that sort of thing," Sarutobi explained. "Depending on how far you want to go with this, it would likely be at least a B-rank. You can set up a consultation to determine the extent of the project for the cost of an E-rank mission, but I'm sure Inoichi wouldn't charge for the initial talk. Many shinobi don't."

"That's more involved than I thought it would be," Naruto admitted. It made sense, but it was also making him feel kind of guilty. Gai had been training him for free. Lee was the man's student, but the he had no obligation to spend time helping Naruto.

"Too much so?"

"No," Naruto replied resolutely. "I'm sure it'll be worth it." The memory aspect of Kage Bunshin was one of its best features, and even the chance that it could be made more versatile had to be explored.

"I'm glad you've taken such an thorough approach to your training," Sarutobi praised, and Naruto couldn't help beaming at the old man. "Now, is there anything else on your mind?"

Naruto's grin faded a bit as he thought about it. The dream with the Kyuubi had been bugging him all day, and the clones he'd sent off to brood about it hadn't gotten anywhere productive with their thinking. Although they had managed to find a reference to a clan that had been wiped out by the Second Shinobi World War.

"Ne, Jiji," he began awkwardly. "Am I an Uzumaki?"

On the surface, it was a stupid question. He was Uzumaki Naruto. Of course he was an Uzumaki.

But had the Kyuubi been telling the truth? Was the Uzumaki clan real, and were they important. Was he one of them? And had the old man known about it and not told him?

"Yes."

_That's it?_ Naruto wondered.

"Of the Uzumaki clan from Uzushiogakure?"

"Yes," Sarutobi admitted.

"Why has no one ever told me about them? Why didn't you ever tell me about them? Do you know who my parents were?"

Sarutobi sighed tiredly. "I do know who your parents were, and I'm sorry I've never mentioned anything about it to you before. Your heritage, like your status as the container of the Kyuubi, has been hidden for many reasons. Your safety chief among them."

"Am I missing something here? My name is Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto said flatly. "How exactly is that hiding the fact that I'm an Uzumaki?"

"It's a bit counterintuitive, and rather tricky," Sarutobi said, chuckling a little. "But there are some oddities about your situation that make it so that having your name be Uzumaki actually makes it so people think you're less likely to actually be one. Like your hair for instance."

"My hair?" Naruto said incredulously. "Why does everyone keep picking on my hair? Even the damn Kyuubi says it shouldn't––"

"The Kyuubi?" Sarutobi cut him off suddenly, his gaze hard. "You've been in contact with the Kyuubi?"

"Uh, I wouldn't say contact, exactly." Naruto tried to explain the situation as quickly as he could. "I had a dream last night, and the Kyuubi said I was an Uzumaki, and something about my hair and my chakra, and then some woman came and kicked his ass and I woke up."

"Start from the beginning, and tell me everything," Sarutobi ordered.

So Naruto did, in as much detail as he could remember.

"This is unexpected," Sarutobi told him, after he'd finished. "You should have come to me about this when you woke up this morning."

Naruto hung his head, dejected.

"It's not your fault," Sarutobi reassured him. "No one warned you about this, so there was no way you could have known. Just keep that in mind from now on."

"Ok," Naruto agreed. "Now can you please tell me what the deal with my hair is? It's really bugging me."

"If you insist," Sarutobi said amusedly. "The vast majority of the Uzumaki clan had red hair. A blond Uzumaki would seem an impossibility to anyone who remembers them."

"Red hair, like the woman in my… dream, or whatever?" Naruto realized.

"The proper term is mindscape," Sarutobi said. "Coincidentally enough, this is also something that will require Yamanaka Inoichi's expertise. I'm afraid that this a potentially very dangerous situation, and I'm going to have to insist that you see him today. This isn't a personal project, so you won't have to pay for anything. You may end up learning things that will help you with your Kage Bunshin, so you can consider that a bonus."

"Oh, that makes sense. What exactly will I learning?"

"At the very least, I want you to be able to exit your mindscape under your own power. We'll worry about anything else after we find out more about what happened."

"Ok."

"Drop by the Yamanaka Flower Shop at 10 PM. Inoichi will be told to expect you."

A flower shop? Actually, that would explain a lot about Ino.

Everything was a bit overwhelming. Talking to the Kyuubi had been a big deal for him, but he hadn't really thought about what the old man would think about it. There was still one more issue though.

"What about my parents?" Naruto asked.

Sarutobi paused for a long moment. "If you ask me to tell you who your parents were, I will tell you."

"That didn't count as me asking?"

"Do you trust me, Naruto?" Sarutobi asked.

"Of course I do," Naruto replied instantly.

"Then will you trust me when I say there are good reasons for me not to tell you right now?"

_That's not how it's supposed to work_, Naruto thought in frustration.

"Can you tell me those reasons?"

"I can tell you one of them. You knowing will increase the chances of other people finding out, and I would prefer to put that off as long as possible."

"Who they were was that important?"

"There are many factors involved. Can you please just try to trust that I know what I'm doing?" Sarutobi pleaded. "This isn't a one time only offer. If you decide that you absolutely need to know, you can come and ask at any time, so don't feel as though if you don't ask now the knowledge will be lost to you forever."

"I do trust you, but how am I supposed to just… How long?" Naruto changed tracks abruptly. "When do you think it'll be a good time to tell me?"

He was angry. How could the old man do this to him? Dangling the identity of his parents in front of him and then playing the trust card? This was torture.

"At the rate things are developing, no later than six months."

Naruto's hands were clenched so tightly his fingernails were drawing blood.

"I can't promise I'll wait that long, but I'll try," he bit out tersely. He stood up abruptly. "I need to go hit things now. Thanks for being straight with me."

"Naruto-kun," Sarutobi called out as the boy practically fled the room. "They would be very proud of you."

* * *

"That went about as well as could be expected," Sarutobi murmured. "You have something to say, Kakashi?"

A basic illusion faded away to reveal the silver-haired jounin leaning against a wall.

"I don't even know where to start anymore," he admitted.

"Just start with the concerns you had before my conversation with Naruto," the older man prompted.

In that case, Kakashi knew exactly where to start.

"Gai's been training him."

"Why Gai and not you? Is that the issue?"

It took every ounce of restraint he had not to yell at his Hokage. "Yes."

"How long do you think Gai has been training Naruto?"

Kakashi blinked at the non sequitur. He thought about the boy's physical conditioning and his proficiency with Gouken. Factoring in Gai's teaching ability…

"Four months. Maybe five or six, but at least four," he hedged.

"Naruto has been training with Gai for less than a week."

"No," Kakashi denied. "That's impossible."

"Not with the way Naruto's been using Kage Bunshin."

"What are you saying?" Kakashi asked suspiciously. "Kage Bunshin doesn't work like that. You can train a little bit with it, but nothing to that extent. Especially with subconscious experience like muscle memory."

"It never struck you as odd that the Kage Bunshin was on the Scroll of Forbidden Seals?"

Kakashi was surprised. "It's actually on there? I thought it was just on the fake version you gave Naruto."

Sarutobi smiled over his interlocked fingers. "Fake version?"

"Yeah the fake… no. It was real?" Kakashi said in shock. "But you knew what was happening the whole time. Why would you let him have the real scroll?"

"To give him the opportunity to learn Kage Bunshin off of it."

_Can you stop dancing around the point already?_ Kakashi knew better than to say that aloud. "Why that in particular?"

"Kage Bunshin was the only thing on that scroll he even had a chance of learning. If he'd tried to learn something else, perhaps something more impressive sounding, he would have failed completely. The technique on the Forbidden Scroll is not the same one you use. It is the original version, which is why it's a hijutsu. High chakra cost is not enough to earn a place on that scroll."

Kakashi was beginning to get an inkling of what was going on. "The original version? What's the difference?"

"Memory transfer," Sarutobi explained. "Every single iota of the clone's experience goes back to the creator. Every thought, feeling, and impulse, no matter how irrelevant. Which is why he can train his muscle memory. For most people, that makes the technique near unusable. Any more than a few minutes of memories is a risk for brain damage. It has a very limited range of applications. If you tried to copy Naruto's training you'd end up with your brains leaking out of your ears."

Kakashi was horrified. "And you didn't warn him not to do it?"

"You think me foolish, Kakashi-kun? We've known that Naruto would eventually be able train like this since he was four years old."

"So all of that––The Gouken, the jutsu, the seals," Kakashi realized, "he was making those seals, wasn't he. All of that was learned in the last week? That's unbelievable."

"Ah, Konohagakure no Jutsu. It's marvelous, isn't it? It even interferes with my Crystal Viewing Technique. Another consequence of the perfect memory transfer is that your fun with Sennen Goroshi is going to bite––or stab, rather––you in the ass."

Kakashi paled as he realized what the Sandaime was saying.

_So that's why he was so pissed off. Fuck._

"We're not going to be able pretend he's talentless anymore," Kakashi noted. He managed not to sound accusing.

"No, his rapid rise in skill will not go unnoticed for long. In fact," Sarutobi rooted through the papers on his desk until he found what he wanted, "we intercepted a report on Naruto and Sasuke that we believe was headed for Otogakure. There was information about your test. Not much, but enough to show us that someone has been poking around with far too much interest."

"That just happened a few hours ago."

"Yes, Otogakure is certainly begging to be noticed."

"You didn't answer my question. Why Gai and not me," Kakashi persisted.

"Ah, Kakashi-kun," Sarutobi sighed. "A shinobi must look underneath the underneath. Oh don't look at me like that," he said as Kakashi's eye visibly twitched. "That piece of wisdom is older than I am. My primary motivation was never making it look like Naruto wasn't a real threat, although that was a convenient bonus. I could have let you start training him when he was five or six. I'm fully confident that you would have turned him into a fine shinobi. But if that was what I wanted, I would have trained him myself."

"You?" Kakashi blurted out.

"I have taught before," the Sandaime said dryly. "I believe you may have even heard of one or two of my students."

"Sorry, that's not–"

"I know." Sarutobi waved off Kakashi's apology. "I have a cabinet full of detailed training plans for Naruto, dating all the way back to a week after he was born. Several of them I even wrote myself. If that was the direction I wanted to go in, I could have made him a match for you by now. I'm sorry Kakashi, but if I had wanted Naruto trained like that I would have been the one to do it."

As much as it rankled Kakashi, it did make sense. "Ok, but _why_ didn't you train him then?"

"I was going to," Sarutobi said, replacing the spent tobacco in his pipe. It lit itself with an elegant display of fire manipulation. "The psychological and physiological reports projected the optimal starting time would be when he was seven years old, although he was scheduled to start chakra control exercises a year earlier."

"What happened?" Kakashi had never had any inkling of this. It had always seemed as though there was never any intention of training Naruto.

"It was his sixth birthday, and we were celebrating at Ichiraku's," the old man reminisced. "He was to begin the preliminary stages of his training later in the day. He asked me what a Hokage was, and I told him. I suppose I was in an odd mood given the circumstances, but the explanation I gave him wasn't meant for a six year old. I told him fully and honestly what I felt the Hokage should be, and he understood. Not completely, but enough that it amazed me. He told me, in that utterly serious way that only children can be, that he would be the Hokage one day." Sarutobi smiled sadly. "And I _believed_ him. I still do. The Will of Fire isn't just a motto or a meaningless war cry. It's a resolute strength of spirit, and Naruto-kun has it as strongly as I've ever seen."

"And after that, you decided _not_ to train him?" Kakashi was baffled.

"Oh, I have been training him," Sarutobi said mischievously. "In a way that no one, not even he, has noticed. Rather than guiding his development down the path that I think is best for him, I've been letting shape himself. Like when I 'scold' him for one of his pranks. I let him know where he went wrong, and he absorbs that information and uses it to plan his next one better. Knowing that he could use Kage Bunshin to make up for any lack of training later on, I was free to train him to himself."

"What does that even mean?"

"What is a good example… ah, yes. When the Academy teachers started deliberately helping Naruto less than the other students. I could have stepped in, made them aware that I knew what was going on, and everything would have straightened itself out. Instead, I waited. Naruto began working harder, looking for the answers on his own. Sometimes he would succeed, and sometimes he would fail. And sometimes he would exceed success. Pay attention to his Henge if you want to see something amazing. It wasn't a fair position to put a child into, and I was ready to stop the instant it looked like the pressure was getting to him. But he never gave up. The harder he was pushed, the more stubborn he got."

"So, you're teaching him to rely on himself?" Kakashi asked as he tried to wrap his mind around it.

"Rely on himself first, yes," Sarutobi agreed. "The closest I ever gave to handing him anything was letting him take the real Scroll of Forbidden Seals. It was up to him to choose to learn Kage Bunshin, and to actually learn it. He reacted even better than I could have hoped for, his interest in Ninjutsu skyrocketing. I admit to cheating a little bit, when he visited the library in order to research more about jutsu."

"Cheating?"

"Oh, I may have placed a rather convenient book where he might find it. Just a little something I wrote a long time ago that I think was a bit underappreciated."

Kakashi had a sneaking suspicion. "That wouldn't happen to be 'Fundamentals of Ninjutsu', would it?" Minato-sensei had tried to make all three of his students read it, but the tediousness of the exercises was ridiculous.

Sarutobi smirked. "Why yes it was. I hid the fact that I am the author somewhat, so he wouldn't automatically come to me every time he had a question or a problem. He may eventually figure it out, but I want him to struggle through it on his own for now."

"Isn't that kind of mean?" Kakashi pointed out.

"Konohagakure no Jutsu is a very basic exercise, warped nearly beyond recognition. When I saw what he was doing, trying to push that exercise further and further, I thought it was a good teaching exercise. He would learn that there were dead ends, even with clones. If I had actually been training him, I would have told him he was wasting his time and to move onto something more fruitful. And that is why Naruto will end up far better training himself."

Kakashi was reminded rather forcibly that Orochimaru had been the Sandaime's student. The cunning of the traitorous sannin was infamous, but it was easy to forget that he'd learned it from his benevolent teacher. It was sounding like Naruto's stubbornness had been specifically engineered to complement the original Kage Bunshin. Which was seriously scary. And brilliant.

"And to finally answer your question, I did not have Gai train Naruto," Sarutobi continued. "I did direct Naruto to a training field where they would eventually cross paths. Incidentally, it barely took a day. With Gai's teaching style, I didn't even have to warn him not to stifle any creativity or oddity on Naruto's part."

"What if Naruto didn't want to train with Gai?" Kakashi asked. Gai would probably train an Iwa genin if he thought they had the Flames of Youth, but Naruto running away screaming could have been a distinct possibility. It was the sensible response to seeing those eyebrows for the first time, after all.

"Then he wouldn't have gotten trained," Sarutobi explained simply. "If he ignores the opportunity, he doesn't get anything."

"So you just conveniently place opportunities in his path, and he manages to take advantage of them?"

"For the most part, yes," Sarutobi said proudly. "He's done exceptionally well with that. He's missed some of them, but only one that is rather important."

"And that would be?"

"A brilliant young woman apprenticed in the Cryptoanalysis squad. He could have asked her for help understanding jutsu theory, but so far he's just been having fun annoying her. It is understandable that his first instinct is to rely on himself, but he'll hopefully learn that he can collaborate and ask others for help. As long as that isn't his first recourse."

Kakashi was beginning to see how far reaching the Sandaime's plans were. "So that's why you pointed him in Yamanaka-dono's direction rather than giving him specific help."

"Yes. I do have a fair idea of how he could achieve what he wants with the Kage Bunshin. But rather than just giving him the answer, this way he learn about it in a way that gives him the opportunity to do much more with it. And to realize when and how he can make use of other peoples' expertise. Forcing him to pay for Inoichi's help will clue him into the fact that he doesn't have to know someone and be on good terms with them in order to ask for their assistance. It will also pressure him to spend more time working on Fuuinjutsu to make some money. Although those particular lessons are going to be stunted by this mess with his seal."

Kakashi frowned. "So that's a real problem then?"

"Oh yes," Sarutobi said gravely. "The Kyuubi has never had that much control over its hosts' mindscapes. By all accounts it shouldn't even be possible. Minato made some odd modifications to the seal created by Mito-sama, but nothing that should allow anything like that. Jiraiya has theorized that Minato may have been able to leave an imprint of himself in the seal, but Kushina's presence in there wasn't something there was even a hint of. I'm sorry, but Naruto will be meeting Jiraiya a bit earlier than planned so that we can get a handle on this."

"So Jiraiya-sama is definitely taking him as an apprentice." It was to be expected, but it was still severely disappointing to have Naruto snatched away from him before he even had the chance to become the boy's mentor.

"Not in the traditional sense, but he will be taking a significant role in the boy's training. You can still teach him," Sarutobi added at the dejected look on Kakashi's face. "But you cannot guide his development––only open doors when he has already pushed in that direction. It will be hard when you see him making mistakes, or doing something weird or pointless, but you absolutely _must_ let him explore his limits. If he asks a question, you can answer. If he asks for help, by all means help him. With Kage Bunshin, he can afford to waste time or even try dangerous experiments. This is a delicate time in his development. His fundamental approach to learning is being built around his massive chakra reserves and ability to abuse Kage Bunshin."

"Understood, sir." Kakashi had mixed feelings about this, but it was better than not being able to train the boy at all.

"I understand that this approach has been very hurtful for you, and for that you have my deepest apologies," Sarutobi said sympathetically. "Even the slightest nurturing of things that remind you of Minato's style could be limiting Naruto's full potential. This is part of the reason I don't want him to know who his father is yet."

"Because he'll try to be more like his father rather than learning what's best for him," Kakashi realized.

"That is correct," Sarutobi confirmed. "Although the ridiculous names he comes up with for his jutsu and tactics should be fine to leave alone. He's certainly taking after Minato in that respect. Or perhaps that's just the result of too much exposure to Gai and his student. I've also removed any detailed references to the Uzumaki clan's Fuuinjutsu from the village records, so that he'll explore that branch with an open mind. I'll put them back once he's established a good foundation based on his own understanding. It shouldn't take very long at all to get past this critical stage in his development, and then it should be fine to train him however you like."

"You said you'd tell him in six months?" Kakashi asked, getting excited at the prospect.

"Oh, far less than that I would imagine. Six months is just the absolute latest I possibly put off telling him, and I certainly don't intend to push it back that much. It's just that nobody is going to overlook him in the Chuunin Exams."

"He'd make a pretty good showing even now," Kakashi agreed, considerably happier than he'd been at the start of the conversation.

"Indeed, although not quite good enough for what I'm hoping."

Kakashi's brow furrowed as he tried to figure out what the old man was up to. Sarutobi just smiled enigmatically.

* * *

_AN:_

_There we have it. _

_How's that for a Good!Manipulative!Sarutobi that is (kind of) consistent with canon? It was hard to reconcile the fact that he cares for Naruto, is really smart, and does absolutely nothing to prepare Naruto for the inevitable conflicts. I hope that the conversation between Sarutobi and Kakashi turned out all right. Its purpose was to explain a looooot of stuff, and making it flow like an actual conversation was difficult. I'm also hoping that the way Sarutobi dealt with Naruto, and the subject of revealing the identity of his parents, came out believably._

_I'm not particularly picky about how the bell test goes, although I usually prefer it if they don't magically realize that the answer is teamwork, and come up with a plan that somehow needs all their skills to work properly. So this version of Naruto tries to analyze it… and sort of gets it? Although not in a way that Kakashi likes. I don't see the bell test as an actual test, but a lesson where Kakashi is trying to bond the team together. Also, the idea that two-thirds of graduates who have their forehead protectors are kicked out of the program is ridiculous. It makes more sense to me if Kakashi is just trying to scare them to make a point._

_I feel bad for Kakashi. I haven't been very nice to him. And Naruto looks at everything he does in the worst possible light. Like how Naruto somehow managed to pick up Kakashi's late excuse thing from Gai, so he thinks that Kakashi is mocking him. And Sennen Goroshi? That's not going to make anyone like you very much. Except maybe Orochimaru._

_The pace should pick up after this, so expect future chapters to be shorter. I'll also be dialing back on the nitty gritties of Naruto's jutsu creation now that you've seen how he goes about it. The stage is pretty much set with this chapter, and I've run out of plot holes to fill. For now. Because a B-Rank clone that a bunch of jounin know how to make really deserves a place on the Scroll of Forbidden Seals. Right._

_Speaking of plot holes, I want to thank Lake25 for bringing up the fact that Sarutobi's book being credited with only his first name (Hiruzen) was weird. I'd forgotten that I needed to address that point. Also, credit for what was going with Naruto's sudden burst of speed when Kakashi ended the test early goes to GenoBeast. I'm still working on how that's going to turn out, but the inspiration comes from one of his ideas._

_Another major theme I was exploring was skill level. Naruto's starting to come into his own, but he can barely manage to even inconvenience Kakashi at this point. Kishimoto ended up with this weird escalation of skill level that I'm trying to avoid by establishing the difference between an elite jounin and three fresh out of the academy genin rather explicitly. I won't be describing skill with terms like 'genin-level' or 'low jounin-level', because they don't actually say anything useful. The variation in things like speed or chakra control is too spread out in accordance with particular specializations to tie to rank. And my interpretation of who wins in a ninja fight isn't strictly linear. It's more like a really messy rock paper scissors type thing. . _

_Fuuinjutsu is badass. There has to be a reason why even novices can't just carefully copy seals. So that's what I came up with that on front. This way of looking at it was something originally slated for a time travel fic I've got on the drawing board, so that I didn't have to explain the slow grind to awesomeness. Time travel fics are nice that way._


	5. Secrets of the Neko-nin

_Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Yet. MWAHAHAHAHAHAH!_

_Special thanks to Last of the Ancients for all his help with the chapter._

* * *

**~~~~~~~~~~~ Konoha's Maelstrom ~~~~~~~~~~~**

* * *

**~ Chapter 5: Secrets of the Neko-nin ~**

"My ramen," Naruto mumbled irritably. "Mine! G'way."

He knew that the Holy Ramen Festival was a dream, but he was in that magical state between sleep and wakefulness that he could slip right back. If whatever it was that kept getting shoved into his side would just go away he could return to being the Holy Emperor of Ramenia.

Naruto grabbed the offending item, not caring enough try and figure out what it was. He just wanted to keep it from poking him, and holding it still seemed like a great idea. Instead of obligingly letting him go back to sleep, the darn thing abruptly pulled away from him, his grip on it pulling him with it before he could let go. Half-asleep and trapped in a blanket, he fell to the floor with a muffled thud.

"Sushi!" he cursed randomly, his mind still somewhat trapped in dreamland. He struggled to extricate himself from the blanket. "You dare challenge the Holy Ramen?" Finally clear of his entanglements, he jumped to his feet to face… Ino?

"What are you doing in my apartment Ino?" Naruto asked, utterly confused by her presence.

"Your apartment? We're in my living room, you nitwit!"

"Who're you calling nitwit, blondie!" Naruto snapped back automatically before taking stock of his surroundings. "Oh, I guess we aren't in my apartment."

"No, we're not in your apartment! Nit! Wit!" She said, her eyebrow twitching dangerously. "What are _you_ doing in _my _house?"

"I was sleeping, until someone rudely woke me," Naruto said, motioning to the couch he'd been pulled off of. It had actually been more comfortable than his lumpy mattress. He and Inoichi-san had been trying to ease past his mental defenses into his mindscape the night before, and the progress they had made was very tiring. Apparently Jinchuuriki naturally developed formidable mental barriers. The older blond had offered to let him sleep on the couch and Naruto had been far too tired to refuse. He'd simply flopped down and was out like a light. Inoichi had apparently slipped a pillow under his head and thrown a blanket over him, which was certainly nice of him.

Naruto sniggered as Ino's appearance fully registered in his mind.

Ino was vain. It was no secret that she took great pride in how she looked, and Naruto had hardly seen her with so much as a hair out of place or a wrinkle in her always fashionable clothes. Naruto could admit objectively that she was the best looking girl in his class, but the fact that Sakura-chan wasn't afraid to get messy when she got angry was large part of her charm, in Naruto's opinion.

The fact that he was the only one who made Sakura-chan lose her composure meant something good, obviously!

Seeing Ino as she was now was a rather surreal experience for him. It was like she was a completely different person. Her hair was messy and in tangles, her eyes bleary from just waking up, and her rumpled pajamas looked like they belonged to a little girl with all the cartoony kittens on it. She was holding a long handled garden hoe in a defensive stance, which was what she'd used to prod him awake.

"What's so funny?" She bit out crossly, her eyes narrowed.

"Kittens, Ino?"

She paled as she realized what she must look like, and then flushed in embarrassment and anger. "Na-ru-to!" she growled out, swinging the gardening implement at his head. Naruto leaned back just far enough for the metal to pass less than an inch from his nose. There was a moment of incomprehension on Ino's part before she realized that yes, Naruto really had dodged. She resumed trying to maim him.

_Sakura isn't the only girl who's cute when she's mad_, Naruto mused as he easily danced around her strikes. _How odd_.

Naruto was having fun, and expressed with it with a beaming grin. It took only a few dodges before he was throwing in excess acrobatics to spice things up. In the two weeks since he'd started training with Gai and Lee, he hadn't fought against anyone even close to being on his level. Lee was still completely out of his league, not to mention how utterly outclassed he was by Gai and Kakashi. He'd known he was getting better, but he hadn't had a chance to really get a sense of how much until now. There hadn't been any sparring amongst Team 7 since they'd officially passed, just boring D-Rank mission after boring D-Rank mission.

He'd sparred with Ino in the Academy, and he could reluctantly admit she'd been more skilled than him. His superior stamina and stronger build had allowed him to beat her, at least after a certain age. After meeting Inoichi-san, it made sense to Naruto that Ino had been skilled enough to take him down before he'd developed his horrendous 'brawler style'. The Yamanaka clan head was a seriously cool guy, and a jounin to boot! He would have made sure that Ino wasn't slacking off in her training.

Come to think of it, the only students that he knew for sure hadn't been beaten by Ino at some point were Sasuke and Kiba. Out of the girls in his class, Naruto would have to say that she'd been the best in taijutsu from what he'd seen.

_But Sakura-chan is smarter!_ Naruto thought, assuaging his guilt at comparing her negatively to her rival, even though it was just in his head.

After just two weeks of training with Gai and Lee, it was amazing to 'spar' with Ino again. The gap between them was ridiculous. She simply wasn't fast enough to give him any trouble, and she was telegraphing her every move. Maybe she'd be better if she wasn't swinging a gardening tool around. But even if she was still more skilled than him, which he very much doubted, it simply wouldn't be enough to even challenge his new speed.

"Stand! Still! Damnit!" Ino snarled as she tried to hit him. In the middle of cartwheeling over a horizontal swing, Naruto absently reached out and stopped a vase from falling over. The graceful and unthinking ease of that action was another awesome benefit of the Kage Bunshin.

Naruto was intensely familiar with his body. There was a huge difference between training physically for a hundred hours total and having a hundred clones each train for an hour, aside from the fact that took a hundredth of the time. The more he trained with his real body, the more his body changed. This was a very good and very intended consequence of course. He was getting faster, stronger, more flexible and a host of other things. But Naruto had the unique ability to train with his body for _hundreds_ of hours without it changing on him.

Gai-sensei had very excitedly explained why this was such an amazing advantage. His proprioception, muscle control, and really anything to with physical awareness or control could be trained to an incredible extent that simply wouldn't be possible without Kage Bunshin. He'd never been ridiculously clumsy before, but gracefulness hadn't been a trait he could have claimed either. Now it _definitely_ was. Gai-sensei had spent a good deal of time making sure that Naruto could recognize what kinds of things needed to be trained with his real body for the conditioning and what could be mostly left to the clones. The increased awareness and control over his body actually made it incredibly easier to learn things of a physical nature.

There was training hard and there was training smart. It was easy to overlook because of how excessively Gai-sensei took the idea of 'train hard', but the eccentric jounin definitely knew what it meant to train smart. After Naruto had been made aware that the kind of tutelage he was receiving was generally paid for, he'd quite reluctantly broached the subject with his teacher. Reluctantly because he certainly didn't have the finances to pay even a fraction of what he valued his training with Gai and Lee at.

Gai had firmly rejected the idea of getting paid for his time. Well, he'd actually said something about how the Springtime of Youth was a beautiful and priceless thing that was a reward unto itself, but Naruto had gotten the picture. He'd already known that Gai was probably the nicest person he'd ever met, but now Naruto was positive that it simply wasn't _possible_ to be any nicer than Maito Gai. That's how awesome he was.

Speaking (or at least thinking) of being nice, Naruto thought that letting Ino keep at trying to murder him with a garden hoe was going to end in something getting smashed. That would be a poor way to thank Inoichi-san for trying to help with the Kyuubi issue.

"Ok," Naruto acknowledged Ino's demand for him to stand still, doing so abruptly.

"Wait, what?" Ino froze mid swing as the other blond inexplicably obeyed her. "What's wrong with you? You're not supposed to _actually_ stand still when someone's trying to hit you."

"Then why did you tell me to," Naruto teased. "Make up your mind, will ya?"

"Nitwit!" Ino growled in frustration, taking another swing at him.

Naruto could tell that this wasn't a genuine attempt to hit him. Her body language showed no intent to follow through, so he didn't move a muscle. Sure enough, she pulled back enough to miss him when he continued standing still.

Ino glared at him. "I'm going to hit you for real this time," she warned.

"Ok!" Naruto said cheerfully.

She did swing at him for real so he jumped back to avoid it, and then dashed forward the instant it was past him. It was but a moment's work to push her backwards down to the floor and disarm her in single smooth motion, ending up kneeling beside her. He'd gently but firmly pressed on the back of her load bearing knee, forcing the leg to collapse and letting her roll with the motion instead of slamming her back into the ground.

She looked up at him in shock, before pouting. "You said you were going to stay still."

Naruto smirked. "I lied. It's a ninja thing."

"Daddy, Naruto's trying to ravish me," Ino accused, so matter of factly that it took a moment for the words to really click in his mind.

Naruto scurried backwards, panicking. "What, I mean, no! I'm not, I would never!" He tripped over himself trying to protest the unfair accusation. Inoichi and a blond woman, who Naruto had never met before but assumed was Ino's mother, were watching them from the doorway to the kitchen.

Ino sat up, tucking her knees under her chin and. Her eyes were filled with hurt and her lip was quivering. "Never? You think I'm ugly, don't you." She looked like she was about to cry.

"No, nonono!" Naruto backtracked. "You're pretty, incredibly pretty!" He would have kept going, except that Ino was suddenly looking very self-satisfied and not the least bit weepy.

"You _are_ after my body," she declared smugly. "I suppose I can't blame you for falling in love with me. You never stood a chance."

Naruto flushed in embarrassment, glaring at the girl.

"No way. You...uh...you've got cooties!" Naruto declared imperiously, wishing he could take it back as soon as it came out of his mouth. Ino had flustered him to the point of being unable to use anything more sophisticated than a six year old's taunts. Oddly enough, it turned out to be very effective.

"What!" Ino shrieked, her smugness evaporating. "Take that back!"

"Nyah-uh," Naruto replied childishly, making another dig at her pajamas. "Not guh-nyah."

"Take it back!" Ino leaped to her feet, charging at him in fury.

Ino's parents watched as their daughter tried her best to pound the boy's face in. Naruto was effortlessly dancing around her, sing songing 'Nyah!' noises as he did so, which seemed to infuriate Ino even more.

"They're thirteen, not eight, right?" Inoichi asked his wife bemusedly.

"You're the one who said she was in too much of a hurry to grow up."

"I may have been too hasty in that assessment," he admitted.

* * *

"Surprise attack of YOUTH!"

Lee snapped his leg down from above his head at a speed that Naruto wouldn't have been able to even see a week before. He barely managed to get his arm braced in the proper position to deflect the kick. Despite that Naruto was knocked to the side rather than Lee's leg being deflected.

Lee was on him in an instant, striking out with punches before Naruto had a chance to regain his bearings. "Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Yosh!"

"Oof," Naruto wheezed out as he was nailed in the stomach. He'd managed to deflect and dodge several strikes by the skin of his teeth before Lee slipped past his defenses. Not that he was under the misconception that Lee was actually going anywhere near all out. Lee was limiting himself to a speed that was just enough to run Naruto ragged and then a touch over, but nothing beyond that. It was training to get Naruto used to combat that was a pace above his own abilities, which was essential for defending against superior opponents.

"That was very good, Naruto-kun!" Lee gushed, having stopped after landing a solid hit. "Your improvement has been incredibly Youthful!"

"Thanks," Naruto said, trying to get his breath back. The twenty kilograms of weight he had on each limb had added to the difficulty of the exercise, but he wasn't complaining. Lee was wearing much more. "But you know attacking from the front and yelling surprise _before_ you attack is not actually a surprise attack, right? If you're going to yell it out, you should do it after."

"But it is triply surprising and Youthful this way!"

"Huh?" Naruto was nonplussed.

"If no one is expecting a surprise attack from behind without warning, then giving a warning makes it doubly surprising! And doing it head on makes it triply surprising, and Youthful!" Lee was practically bouncing on his feet with excitement as he explained. He gave an enthusiastic thumbs up at his favorite word.

"A surprise that isn't a surprise isn't more surprising than a surprise that's just a surprise. Wait." Naruto's brow furrowed as he thought over what he'd just said. "Ok, yeah, that sounded about right."

"than a… surprise with… a surprise," Lee scribbled into his notebook, face scrunched in concentration as he mistranscribed what he'd heard.

"No, that's not… never mind." Naruto sighed in resignation, resisting the urge to rub his temples. Sometimes it was in the best interests of his sanity to just ignore Lee's eccentricities.

Lee's teammate Tenten giggled from where she was sitting on a tree branch watching, swinging around a wicked looking kusarigama. It had three blades which snapped into position much like a Fuuma Shuriken. The girl had a seemingly neverending arsenal of incredibly awesome sharp and pointy things.

The graceful way she was twirling it around in complicated patterns was nothing short of art. If Naruto were to try anything even a tenth as complicated as what she was doing so casually he'd probably end up chopping off his ass in about three seconds flat, not that it stopped him wanting to try. That was what Kage Bunshin were for, after all.

Naruto had met Lee's teammates a few times in passing the last couple of weeks. With Gai-sensei as their instructor, it was no surprise that they seemed deadly competent. Tenten was surprisingly normal, but Neji was a pretty much Sasuke with girlier hair. Apparently the Rookie of the Year title came with a complimentary fifteen foot pole to shove where the sun don't shine. And that was to replace the ten foot one that they came equipped with.

Tenten was nice though. Not on the level of of Gai and Lee, but she did offer to help him train instead of sneering at him like he was trash. Well, she offered to give him practice dodging projectiles in return for giving her a moving target that she didn't have to hold back on for fear of maiming. She took a bit too much pleasure in brutally killing clone after clone.

If she showed up before Gai's team was supposed to meet, he'd give her some clones to slice, stab, and otherwise sadistically lacerate to 'death'. Oddly enough, she'd started showing up about forty five minutes early every day he trained with Gai and Lee when he'd started doing that. It was probably a complete coincidence.

"Those circle things were interesting," Naruto noted. She'd been using a new kind of weapon today. "I had a weird time trying to deal with them."

"They're called chakram," Tenten informed him. "They looked like fun so I thought I'd try them out."

"You thought you'd try them out, just like that?" Naruto shook his head in amazement. "I'd hate to be on the other end of those after you've had some time to train with them. And whoever you buy all your weapons from must love you, getting that much stuff on a whim."

Tenten smirked at the praise. "Oh, he better. He's my father." She looked at him slyly. "Come to think of it, I've never seen you use kunai or shuriken. You should drop by sometime and get yourself properly outfitted. The Steel Dragon only has the highest quality gear," she shamelessly self-advertised.

Quality meant expensive, so Naruto was about to decline in some hopefully uninsulting way when he had a sudden thought. "Do you carry explosive tags?"

"The best," she promised with a knowing smile. "You boys and your explosions."

"And you don't like them? I find that hard to believe."

"Oh, I didn't say that." Tenten's tone was amused, and Naruto felt a shiver run down his spine as he imagined what she could do with explosive tags.

"I'll drop by sometime then." Naruto's interest wasn't in buying, but selling. Sure, it would be nice to buy some nice stuff for once, but that would cost money that he didn't have. He'd shifted a good deal of his training time into Fuuinjutsu after deciding that it was going to be a much needed source of income. The Sandaime had been absolutely correct about Inoichi-san being willing to do the initial consultation for free. The old man had also been right about how involved his project would be. Inoichi had confirmed that it wouldn't be simple.

Fuuinjutsu was really suited to training with clones. There was so much to learn, practice, and experiment with that there was no struggle to avoid clones overlapping in what they were learning. And he could be far less careful with seals given that any mishaps would only end up dispelling a clone.

Efficiency was something he was trying to be more aware of. At first, he'd been perfectly happy having pretty much all of his clones working on the same thing. So what if there was some useless overlap? He could makes _lots_ of clones after all. But the instant gratification of advancing in one or two things really quickly was an atrocious waste of his training method's full potential. There were still some things he felt were worth flooding with clones though. Chakra control was important enough to warrant lots of extra clones doing exactly the same thing, for instance. It benefited pretty much everything else he did, so the 'wasted' effort wouldn't actually be wasted.

"Yosh!" Lee exploded, interrupting Naruto's thoughts. "I too shall help Naruto-kun be properly equipped! I shall get you a proper jumpsuit, like mine. No, I shall get you an orange one!"

_Oh no. No way in hell, _Naruto thought, panicking a little. It was true that his clothes had been taking a lot of abuse in the past few weeks and he could do with something more durable, but that was _not_ an option.

Lee was looking so proud at the idea of tainting the purity of Orange. It was hard to resist the urge to scream 'Hell no!', but with Lee that would feel like kicking a puppy. He was just so nice and genuine, and he didn't realize the monstrous evil of his offer. Explaining what Naruto thought of his jumpsuit would be plain insulting. Definitely not something Lee would deserve. Naruto decided to try and sidestep the issue.

"Hm, did you say something?" Pretending he didn't hear seemed like a viable option.

"Geh! Naruto-kun is so hip!" Lee had an expression of ridiculous shock on his face, far out of proportion to what Naruto had said.

_What the hell kind of reaction is that?_ Naruto wondered. A single thought–_'Kakashi showed up'_– pulsed from the Kage Bunshin posing as him, giving him an excuse to get away from Lee before the boy could try to turn the jumpsuit issue into some kind of competition.

* * *

Hiding somewhat in the shadows, Naruto watched as his team plus a clone exited the Hokage Tower. He was trying not to flaunt his use of the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. Sasuke had gotten really weird about it when he'd shown it as an explanation for his rapid improvement.

Sasuke seemed fine with it at first, but he'd immediately 'asked' Naruto to teach it to him. Although it had been phrased as a request, his tone made it clear that it was more along the lines of a demand. Aside from Naruto's feeling of possessiveness over the technique, the old man had explicitly forbidden him teaching it to anyone else. None of his classmates would even be able to muster enough chakra to make even one clone, and if they tried forcing the issue too much they could even end up hurting themselves. Not to mention it _was_ a forbidden technique.

Unwilling to get into why he was allowed to use it and not Sasuke, Naruto had deflected by telling the other boy that he couldn't just ask for techniques like he was entitled to them. That seemed to settle the issue, but the next day Sasuke showed up and very begrudgingly offered to let Naruto borrow a scroll on Katon: Gokyakyu no Jutsu so he could 'try' to learn it in exchange for the clone technique.

Naruto had been _beyond_ insulted. Gokyakyu was a C-Rank technique that he had already learned from 'Fundamentals of Ninjutsu', and he'd seen instructions for it in at least three other books he'd gone over in the library. And if that wasn't bad enough, Sasuke had implied that he didn't even think Naruto could learn the technique. The blond had told the Uchiha where he could shove his offer. The bastard even had the nerve to look affronted, as if he thought he'd proposed a fair deal.

He'd let the issue go after that, but Naruto had a very bad feeling about the predatory look in his eyes every time he saw Naruto use clones from then on.

Information on the Sharingan was something he'd come across a few times in his research, so Naruto had a fair idea what his teammate was thinking. If Sasuke already had the vaunted eyes of his clan it was doubtful he would have even bothered offering anything for Kage Bunshin in the first place.

Theoretically, Naruto wouldn't mind if Sasuke copied a few of his jutsu. Not Kage Bunshin obviously, and certainly not the things he was coming to regard as his personal jutsu, like Konohagakure no Jutsu. But if Sasuke was going to be a total dick about it, he wasn't getting anything from Naruto. He resolved not to use anything that he couldn't do without seals (or at least being able to reduce the number of seals) in front of the Uchiha, and he'd taken to periodically checking for genjutsu just in case the bastard got the smart idea to hide his stupid Sharingan. Once he'd thought of it he realized it was probably a good idea even without the threat of a hidden Sharingan.

It's not paranoia if your teammate has evil jutsu stealing monkey eyes, after all.

Naruto formed a cross-like seal similar to the modified clone seal he used for Kage Bunshin, and put a small amount of chakra into it. The clone posing as him stood still as it got his mental message, pretending to look at something off to the side.

The Sandaime had come through on his promise of letting Naruto take a closer look at the information on Kage Bunshin, and had even thrown in some other things related to it that certainly hadn't been in the scroll. One of those things had been a technique to communicate with his clones, and they to him and each other, that didn't involve making a clone and dispelling it. It allowed for a short thought to be 'broadcast' across the mental network that connected clones to him, and that thought was even easy for those not intended as recipients to ignore.

In this case, his message was 'prepare to switch' and it was aimed at the clone posing as him with his team.

Carefully using the full extended seals for the Kawarimi no Jutsu, Naruto seamlessly switched himself with his clone. There was no smoke and only the barest pulse of chakra as he stealthily performed the technique. It was something he'd practiced to the point where it should have been near impossible to detect, but nonetheless Kakashi turned and raised his visible eyebrow as though to say 'do you really think you got away with that?'

Naruto just shrugged, a bit put out that he hadn't gotten away with it. The first time he figured out that Kakashi had caught onto his game of not wasting his time waiting, Naruto thought he was in for a dressing down. The silver-haired jounin had done nothing, prompting Naruto to think that maybe he hadn't actually noticed, but the man always seemed to give him a 'look' when he showed up for real. Naruto thought that the whole lateness thing might actually be a lesson of some sort, like when Kakashi had told them not to eat before the test.

In the meantime though, it had become a game to try and switch without Kakashi noticing. So far the score was Kakashi: 8, Naruto: 0.

Naruto frowned as the memories of the clone that had been posing as him flowed into his head. They'd been assigned the 'Catch Tora' mission, again, but that wasn't what was bothering him. Sakura was the cause of his consternation in this case.

* * *

"_Hey Naruto," Sakura greeted him as he arrived at the training ground._

"_Morning Sakura-chan!" The clone was pleasantly surprised at her speaking to him first. _

_Sakura never acknowledged him before he spoke, and her responses had always been half-hearted. Not that he was holding it against her, as their team meetings were early in morning. He was used to waking up even earlier to train with Gai and Lee so he was wide awake by the time he...er…his clones showed up. In fact the real Naruto had been training with Lee for the past hour since escaping the Yamanaka house, and was still having the crap beat out of him._

_Sakura was looking at him worriedly, seeming quite vulnerable. "You still like me, right?"_

_The scenario was so similar to what had happened with Ino earlier in the morning that the clone almost had to pinch himself. It was just a funny coincidence, he was sure. Sakura wasn't the type of girl who would tease like her rival._

"_Of course I do," Naruto reassured her. He was totally bewildered by the question. How could she even doubt it? And why did she suddenly care?_

"_Cha!" Sakura shouted triumphantly, startling the blond. "Of course you wouldn't choose Ino-buta over me." The conversation seemed to be over as far as she was concerned._

_Naruto stood stunned. What had just happened?_

* * *

Thankfully the clone had thought and brooded over the incident while waiting for Kakashi, so it didn't hit Naruto like it could have. Nonetheless, it was still incredibly hurtful.

Sakura had rebuffed and even demeaned his advances for years. Most people thought that Naruto was simply too dense to realize what was happening, but that wasn't the case. The idea that he'd have to prove that he was worth her time didn't bother him. Compared to the systematic and village-wide effort to pretty much ignore his existence, Sakura's blatant rejections were practically validation in of themselves.

But that was before this.

The fact that Ino had thought to use his presence in her house as ammunition against Sakura wasn't surprising. The fact that she'd done so that incredibly quickly was surprising.

_Girls are weird_, Naruto thought to himself. He could deal with the fact that Sakura didn't value his affections. That was something he'd simply been planning to change. But for her assert ownership of them when she thought they might be shifting to Ino while still making it clear she didn't have a use for them made him feel… violated.

Sakura was allowed to not accept his feelings. She was not allowed to reject them and then summarily toy with them for her petty rivalries. Naruto may be a bit annoyed with Ino for her part in this mess, but he was downright angry at Sakura. It was a weird feeling.

"Are you going to help us out like last time, Naruto?" Kakashi asked as they reached the area that Tora had reportedly escaped from.

"How about another bet, Sasuke?" Naruto asked, smiling mischievously.

"No," Sasuke replied curtly. He glared at the blond as he remembered what had happened the last time they'd tracked down the cat.

This was the fourth time they'd had the mission 'Catch Tora', and it had barely been more than a week since they'd started running missions. The second time they'd gotten it, mere days from the first, Naruto had decided to plan ahead and imbue the identifying ribbon tied to the cat's ear with a lot of his chakra. And sure enough they'd been assigned the mission again a few days after that. There had still been enough chakra in the ribbon for him to sense it and track it down once they were within a couple hundred meters of the feline.

Naruto had bet Sasuke that he could track down the cat in less than ten minutes, with the terms being whoever lost the bet had to physically catch the cat. It had taken them hours to track down the damn thing the first two times, and Tora was a biter and scratcher. Sasuke had taken what he thought was a sucker bet, and Naruto had proceeded to go straight for the cat, pretending he was using his sense of smell.

Sasuke had not been happy, and had tried to renege on the bet by claiming that Naruto cheated. Naruto had just shrugged and said he should have known that Sasuke wouldn't keep his word, and that had stung the other boy's pride enough to actually go through with it. Naruto had been treated to ten very enjoyable minutes of watching Sasuke try to catch the cat. Sakura had tried to help, but Sasuke had curtly told her off, his pride still smarting from Naruto's insinuations.

Pleased by how well his tracking method had worked, Naruto had placed a simple seal on the ribbon before they returned the cat. It was just meant to store and radiate his chakra, making the chakra last longer. Without the seal, he'd estimated that the chakra would have faded too much to be useful in a total of five or six days. With the seal, he was hoping something more like two weeks, and a larger effective area. It wasn't really necessary for Tora, but the mission was a nice testing ground for his little idea.

Naruto discretely pulsed his chakra to check for genjutsu, and Sasuke's eyes still lacked the Sharingan, so he created three Kage Bunshin.

"What are you doing?" Sakura asked, wondering why he wasn't sniffing out the cat like last time.

Two of the clones faced each other, crouched down, and the third clone stepped on their outstretched palms. The third clone jumped straight up as the other two abruptly stood and threw him towards the sky. All three were using chakra to enhance the movement, so the jumping clone shot up easily higher than fifty meters into the sky. Coordinating with clones was awesomely easy.

"You expect me to reveal the ancient secrets of the Neko-nin-nyah?" Naruto said, pointing to his whisker marks. The clones dispelled, giving him a fairly exact position for the cat. "Tora's about a hundred and fifty meters thataway, by the river." Naruto pointed in the direction, and starting running that way. His team followed him.

"Ancient secrets of the Neko-nin?" Sasuke asked, looking at him seriously. Naruto was surprised at just how genuine the question seemed. Sasuke appeared to be taking his joke way too seriously. What was up with that?

"Emphasis on secrets-nyah!" Naruto said playfully as he jumped through the trees.

"That's not even close to funny," Sakura informed him.

Naruto nearly growled at her. He wasn't in the mood to simply brush off her condescension. Not after the way she'd treated him in the morning.

"It's your turn to catch the cat," Sasuke told Naruto.

"There aren't turns, teme."

"I did it last time," he insisted.

"Because you lost a bet, fair and square."

"That wasn't fair! You knew you would win."

Naruto looked at him disbelievingly. "Of course I did. Why would I if I thought I could lose?"

"That was cheating," Sasuke grumbled.

"Was not!"

"Was too!"

"Was not!"

"Was… I'm not doing this."

"That means I win-nyah!"

"Just because I refuse to play your childish games does not mean you win." He wasn't going to let Naruto have the last word though.

"Does too!"

"Does not!"

"Does t–"

"SHUT UP!" Sakura screamed, startling both boys. "I've had enough of BOTH OF YOU! Sasuke-kun, stop encouraging him. Naruto stop with the stupid cat stuff already!"

Just the day before, the fact that she was including Sasuke in her reprimand would have sent Naruto over the moon. Today, it was just surprising. Ok, really surprising, but it didn't actually make him happy. In fact, arguing with Sasuke was pretty fun when the teme didn't just go 'hn' to everything, so he was actually annoyed by her interrupting them.

"Not gun-nyah," Naruto told her stubbornly.

Sakura flinched as though she'd been struck, and even Sasuke and Kakashi were looking at him in dumbstruck shock. Naruto had _never_ talked back to Sakura. And Sakura's standard reaction to things she didn't understand? Get very angry at them.

"Na-ru-to!" She growled as she jumped at him, a manic expression on her face.

"Nyah nyan nyan, nyan nyan-nyah!" Naruto sang out childishly as he dodged around her attempts to catch him. He took off to the side through the forest, Sakura chasing after him while shouting threats and obscenities.

"Cheh," Sasuke scoffed, smirking. "My win, dobe."

"Oh really?" Kakashi said, going back to his book. "The way I see it there's only one little genin left, and we still have a cat to catch."

Sasuke paled. He tried to go after Naruto and Sakura. "Naru-guh!"

Kakashi simply reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt without looking away from his Icha Icha, cutting off Sasuke's angry shout and his escape. "No you don't," the jounin admonished, hoisting the boy up by his shirt as he ineffectually tried to struggle out of Kakashi's grip.

* * *

Tenten's claims had not been empty boasts.

The quality of everything in the Steel Dragon was much better than Naruto was used to dealing with. He actually had a set of very nice kunai that the Sandaime had given him for his last birthday that he was now realizing had been bought here. They were so nice that Naruto hadn't want to so much as smudge them, and remained unused in a box in his apartment. Although the prices seemed pretty reasonable given the quality, this definitely wasn't a place he could afford to shop at given his finances.

That didn't stop him from looking however.

In addition to the usual fare (kunai, shuriken, wire, caltrops and the like) there was a great deal of much more exotic merchandise. Collapsable blades, barbed whips, and nodachi that were longer than Naruto was tall were just a few of the many things he never would have expected to see in a Shinobi weapons shop.

Despite the countless weirder and more interesting looking things, Naruto was drawn to odd contraption that looked like a giant crossbow with too many cables threaded through odd wheel-like devices on either side. It wasn't the kind of thing that looked to be useful in a shinobi battle, but that wasn't why he was interested in it.

_That could definitely work_, Naruto thought, a devious smile appearing on his face as he looked at the size of the projectiles the thing was apparently meant to fire.

"Planning to lay siege?"

Naruto spun around in surprise. A few feet behind him as a tall man with short brown hair, about Kakashi's height but much broader. He seemed a whole lot more imposing than his jounin-sensei. "Um… what?"

The man motioned to what Naruto had been entranced with. "The compound ballista is a siege weapon. It's not really used by ninja anymore, but it's still popular for larger non-shinobi forces, such as mercenaries or private armies. It's more of a showpiece, although it is perfectly functional."

"Ah, I'm not planning a siege," Naruto said, gaining his bearings. "I've just never seen anything like it before."

"I had to make sure," the man said, chuckling a bit. "You had a smile on your face that reminded me a bit of my daughter when she sees a new weapon for the first time, which is always followed by vast amounts of damage done to training dummies."

"You're Tenten-san's father," Naruto realized. "She said I should drop by if I needed any equipment."

"Oho, you know my daughter," the man said, smiling at him strangely. "I'm Higurashi Kouseki, owner and primary supplier of the Steel Dragon. Is there anything I can help you with?"

"I hope so. I'm Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto introduced himself, watching the older man carefully for any signs of a negative reaction. He'd been much more reclusive in the past couple of weeks since learning of the Kyuubi, and besides Gai-sensei and Kakashi-sensei this was really the first person he really got to scrutinize knowing what his name and face must mean to them.

"Nice to meet you Uzumak-kun! So what is it that I can do for you?" Kouseki's smile didn't falter and there wasn't even the slightest indication that the man had a problem with Naruto or even recognized him.

_Was I getting all worked up for nothing?_ Naruto wondered. "I heard that you sell explosive tags."

"We do, but not the low-power kind you trained with in the Academy," Kouseki said, his smile fading in favor of a much more serious expression. "Weapons level explosive tags are a completely different matter, and not the sort of thing I can see a genin needing. Plus they're quite expensive. If you just want something flashy, I'll have to direct you to A Ton of Metal. They carry the lower level tags. Here's a bit of advice though: _never_ buy lower than C-Grade for explosive seals, and anything level five and above, always spring for at least B-Grade. Yes, they're more expensive, but it's definitely worth it to avoid the risk of blowing yourself up. And don't take this the wrong way kid, but I'm guessing that if you're using explosions in your missions at this point in your career, you're doing them wrong."

"Um… ok? Thanks for the advice, but I was actually looking to try and sell them to you, not buy them," Naruto said, scratching the back of his head self-consciously.

Kouseki chuckled a bit at the misunderstanding. "Well, can't you just sell them back to wherever you got them from? Like I said, there's a certain quality assurance to my wares, and I can't be sure of the level of the work if I don't know the supplier."

"I didn't buy them, I made them," Naruto stated, a little defiantly.

Kouseki's brow furrowed disbelievingly. "You can make explosive tags?"

Naruto bristled at being underestimated. Yes, he knew that sealing was a difficult line of study and that it was entirely reasonable to think he was bullshitting, but it still felt like he was being looked down on. He wanted to retort that he was an Uzumaki, a clan that had been renowned for their sealing skills, but the Sandaime's warning about his heritage being a secret stopped him for a moment.

_Well, my name __**is**__ Uzumaki_, he reasoned. _That's not much of a secret. Seriously, is the color of my hair really going to matter on that front?_ He was still irritated at the old man for dangling his parentage in front of him, although he was finding that he did trust the Hokage enough to wait on that front. Didn't mean he had to like it though.

"I… yes. I can." He wasn't going to use his clan name, especially since there wasn't any guarantee it would work. Worst case scenario, it would just take longer to get started selling seals.

_Oh shit_, Naruto thought as Kouseki's eyes went contemplatively to his blond hair. _But I didn't say anything! What the hell is up with my hair, damnit!_

"Hm, I'll hear you out despite my better judgment. I don't suppose you've been certified?"

Naruto shook his head. "Not yet."

"Let me see 'em." Kouseki held his hand out. Naruto pulled a stack of seals out of his jacket and handed them over. "Huh, you actually made quite a few, and you went with one of the better designs," he said as he flipped through them quickly before picking one to examine in detail.

Naruto shifted uneasily on his feet as his work was scrutinized. He'd come a long way with explosive tags since Kakashi's 'test', and he was fairly confident in the quality of his tags. Of course, the bar here was much higher than he'd anticipated. He was suddenly very thankful for how carefully he'd made the tags. It took him about 12-15 minutes to carefully write out an explosive tag, but he'd spent 30 minutes each on these just to be extra sure. Well, his clones had. There was no way he was going to sit around for hours making seal after seal.

"I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but it looks like these are at least worth testing," Kouseki said, surprise evident in his voice. "Tenten!" he called out.

"Yeah dad?" her voice came from the behind the front counter, in another room.

"Mind the store for me, I need to check something out."

"What's going on?" she asked, walking out of the back room. She was wiping her hands with a cloth, and there were what looked like oil stains on the apron she was wearing. "Oh, Naruto-kun," she smiled as she saw him. "You came!"

"Hi Tenten-san," he waved. "I said I would, after all."

"I need to go test some tags, so cover for me," Kouseki said, holding up the tags.

Tenten's eyes zeroed in on the seals with frightening intensity. "Explosive tags?" She asked, grinning excitedly. "Can I help? Please?"

Kouseki sighed in resignation. "You'd think I would've learned to keep my mouth shut by now," he muttered.

Tenten practically skipped over to them, untying her apron and carelessly tossing it back to the counter. She snatched the tags from her father's hands without waiting for an answer, flipping through them with a look of unholy glee.

Naruto was startled when Kouseki formed a familiar cross-like seal with a look of concentration.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," the man said, and despite his intense expression only one clone popped into existence, heading towards the counter. Naruto thought that was a little odd, but he was more surprised by the technique.

"You know Kage Bunshin?" Naruto asked before he could stop himself. Kouseki raised an eyebrow at that.

Tenten laughed. "He's a jounin," she explained. "If you can do it, why is it so surprising that he can?"

"Wait, _you_ can do Kage Bunshin?" Kouseki asked in astonishment, his eyes flicking to Naruto's hair again before turning to his daughter. "And you knew about it?"

Tenten looked at her father in confusion. "Is that a big deal? He lets me use them for target practice."

"Target practice? Kage Bunshin? That's…" Kouseki shook his head. "Ok, let's head out to the back." He led them to a door in the back of the shop. "Tenten, Kage Bunshin is a B-Rank technique. It's not something a genin can just pick up on a whim."

"B-Rank?" Tenten looked at Naruto in surprise when they were outside. "Where did you learn it then?"

"Ehehe," Naruto chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his neck. "It's, uh, classified." He avoided her eyes, taking the opportunity to look around. There was a large training area behind the shop, filled with all sort of dummies, obstacles and other things he couldn't identify.

_So that's why the shop is out here_, Naruto realized. He'd first tried looking for the Steel Dragon in the merchant district, eventually having to ask about it after looking at every shop twice. He'd been directed to the outskirts of the village, which had surprised him. It didn't seem like a great location for a business.

"Classified?" Tenten asked, puzzled. "What would–"

"Tenten," Kouseki cut in sharply. "Classified is classified. Don't try to guess at it. Let's just see if this kid's tags are any good and leave it at that."

Tenten perked up, looking at Naruto. "Wait, you make explosive tags? Why didn't you say so before?"

"Uh, you didn't ask?" Naruto said, unnerved by how much attention his skills were getting all of the sudden.

"But, but, explosive tags!" Tenten whined piteously.

"We're here," Kouseki said dryly, saving Naruto from Tenten. They'd stopped at a smooth crater that was about twelve meters in diameter and five meters deep.

"Hey!" she complained as her father snatched the tags out of her hands.

"This is an inspection, not a party," he said sternly, looking over one of the tags closely for about half a minute before handing it to her. Tenten was practically bouncing on her feet in anticipation while she was being forced to wait.

She immediately produced a kunai from somewhere and tied the tag to it with obviously practiced easy. "Mark!" she called out, presumably to announce having armed it with chakra, and then threw it with her typical level of skill. It shot through the air unerringly to stick at the bottom of the crater, exploding in a very satisfying manner a few seconds later. Tenten giggled, a bright and open smile on her face that should not have been eerie, but was. Kouseki was just looking at the explosion and aftermath with a critical eye.

Tenten with stabby things was scary. Tenten with stabby things that exploded… that was terrifying.

That was the routine for ten tags. The tag would be carefully inspected, passed to Tenten, and then detonated safely.

Well, that wasn't quite true. About halfway through Tenten launched a tag angled up instead of down, followed immediately by a shuriken going faster that cut the tag off of its kunai, allowing it to flutter down. It exploded exactly at the level of their feet, smack dab in the center of the crater.

Naruto was impressed at the showmanship, but the long-suffering look her father gave her probably meant that he wasn't.

"Well, I've seen enough," Kouseki declared.

"Aww," Tenten pouted, but she couldn't wipe the smile off her face enough to make it very convincing.

"I have to say I'm very impressed, kid," Kouseki said, but his tone kept Naruto from getting his hopes up too much. "The quality of your tags is _much_ better than I would have expected from someone with just a year in the field."

Tenten looked at him, puzzled. "A year? But I thought you graduated a couple of weeks ago?"

"I did, two and a half weeks ago," Naruto admitted.

"No," Kouseki said, shocked. "Kage Bunshin and this? Really?"

Naruto blushed a bit, unable to hold down a proud smile.

"Sheesh, kids today," Kouseki grumbled. "That being said, I'd have to estimate those tags were about B-Grade in quality." Naruto's face fell a bit. "Don't get me wrong, that's amazing! It's just the consistency of a couple of things is a bit too varied, like the delay and the power. With the philosophy of my store, I can only sell A-Grade. The difference may not seem like a lot, but it's a guarantee that you know _exactly_ how the seal will perform. Honestly, I'd say with few months of refinement you could be making A-Grade explosive tags if you keep at it, and it certainly wouldn't hurt to get certified. That'd get you access to a sealing chamber for one, which would definitely help things along. And it would allow you to charge a little more."

Naruto perked up at the relatively short time Kouseki thought it would take. A chibi Naruto was doing a victory dance in his head singing _Kage Bunshin, Kage Bunshin-nyah!_

_Wait, what?_ Naruto thought, weirded out by the unintentional nyah. _Maybe I've been saying that a bit too much._

"I bet I can get to that level in a few days," Naruto declared seriously.

"Is that so?" Kouseki was smiling. Not condescendingly, but still in a way that seemed to say _it's not going to be that easy, kid._

"I would have had it already if I hadn't gotten sidetracked working out the kinks in my flashbang tags," he grumbled.

Suddenly, Tenten was up in his face, her eyes sparkling and giving him the very definition of puppy-dog eyes. It was so intense he could almost imagine fluffy ears and a furiously wagging tail.

"What's-a-flashbang-tag?" she asked so excitedly and quickly the words almost ran together.

_Oh boy_, Naruto thought in panic. _I'm doomed_.

* * *

_AN:_

_Nyah is the japanese equivalent of meow, for anyone who might not have known._

_It's never explicitly stated in canon, but I get the sense that Academy sparring was boys against boys and girls against girls. That just doesn't make sense in a ninja world, where I doubt the idea of 'boys shouldn't hit girls' is actually a thing for shinobi. Not even instinctively. If that's a civilian notion, I'd expect the Academy to train it out of them. Shikamaru not wanting to fight girls is just Shikamaru being lazy._

_In the Chuunin Exams neither Ino nor Sakura are even close to being impressive with their taijutsu, but in the Academy it makes sense for Ino to be the most skilled of the girls. At least from Naruto's perspective._

_Using Gentle Fist Hinata would have been able to defeat Ino handily in the Academy, but I'm thinking it didn't go down like that. All the evidence I see points to the conclusion that Hinata didn't use Jyuken in the Academy, and from what I understand of the Hyuuga clan I doubt she would have been allowed to. Giving other clans and possible spies the opportunity to watch a half-trained user of their style against various different opponents in a sparring situation as that user progressed in skill just gives way too much opportunity to analyze and deconstruct the style. The Hyuuga clan wouldn't bother teaching styles other than Jyuuken, so what Hinata sparred with in the Academy would have been what she learned there._

_Edit: As far as Sakura is concerned, she came off looking rather mean in this chapter. This isn't a bashing fic, so I hope it doesn't feel like that although I know it's a bit futile at this point. She's insecure, especially about how she compares to Ino. It's not that she thinks Naruto belongs to her and he can't go after any other girl, which is how he's kind of perceiving it, but that for him to switch his affections to Ino is a terrible blow to her insecurities. The fact that Naruto likes her is something she appreciates on some level, and the idea of him choosing Ino over her is terrifying. She's incredibly relieved when he says he hasn't and doesn't consider how she's gone about it. She's not stupid or evil, she's just an insecure teenage girl who isn't handling her emotions very well._

_Compound Ballista - I made it up. Basically a kind of modernized ballista that is like a compound bow._

_Higurashi Kouseki is a tip of the hat to 'The Dichotomy of Namikaze Naruto' by Thunderreaper._


End file.
